When separate reviews found that the UK’s largest co-operative had suffered “deplorable governance failures” and a board structure that “made a serious governance failure almost inevitable”, it cast a shadow over the entire co-operative and mutual model.
But does the saga at the Co-operative Group prove co-ops are ungovernable? The answer has serious consequences. In the UK alone 6,169 customer-owned or member-owned organisations generate turnover of £36.7bn.
Johnston Birchall, professor of social policy at the University of Stirling, opens another recent report into co-operative governance with the wry observation: “When a conventional investor-owned company fails, people ask why it failed. When a co-operative fails, people ask whether co-operatives can ever be made to work.”