Comments on: Professional hockey and collective ownership

By: John Horn

John Horn — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:28 +0000

As a member of the Board of Directors for Vancouver’s oldest – and coolest – Food Co-operative, I have to say that I like this. A lot. And it’s painfully simple, folks, especially when owning a hockey team is used as the hilariously extreme example; the East End Food Co-op (www.east-end-food.coop) has seen tough times in its 30-plus years – as did les Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets – but, due to an overwhelming sense of ownership and community, the people who owned the business refused to let it fail. It’s always nice when the owners of something actually have a stake in it – or perhaps are actually customers of the product(s) or service(s). Very rarely does the co-op experiment wiggle its way out of the non-profit world, though…

Now, I’m not saying the Harvard Business Review agrees with you guys, but this article is worth a read. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, talks about how 21st century businesses are designed to maximize shareholder value, even if “shareholding has become a short-term and opaque thing. Program traders shift positions daily based on tiny price variations and most share certificates are held in ‘street form’ — i.e., not registered to an individual because they are owned by a fiduciary institution like a mutual or pension fund that stands between the corporation and the shareholder.” His article nicely outlines the role community – or lack thereof – has to do with this perceived or real (depending on who you ask) end of the love affair with business. Check out his first post in the series here: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/201/02/why_business_has_lost_our_resp.html.

As with History, it turns out community matters, too…

By: Martin Renauld

Martin Renauld — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:26:05 +0000

Thanks for you comment Jim. I totally agree with you. The idea of the post was to take an extreme case to show the wider use we could make of coops. Cell phone and internet providers could also make a strong case…

By: Jim Clifford

Jim Clifford — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:30:29 +0000

Great post Martin. I really think we need to revisit the Coop model in our economy. It seems to work well for credit unions and outdoors sporting goods stores, so why don’t we use them for our food supply, our internet connections, cell phone providers and even our sports teams – I can’t imagine a coop could do a worse job as owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’ve always liked Coops as a great way to keep market forces in play, while increasing the focus on customer service (I’m thinking of my internet and cell phone providers here), sustainable social and environmental practices and better labour relations (worker coops are great models too).