3.8: References

The discussion of cooperative formation begins with concepts from Mancur Olson’s classic book The Logic of Collective Action.

Additional information on cooperatives as participatory organizations can be found at tinyurl.com/ycvp2wnz.

The notion that a cooperative acts as a “competitive yardstick” is associated with Edwin Nourse, and is described in “The Place of the Cooperative in Our National Economy,” available at http://tinyurl.com/yazt5377. The discussion on principles and policies is adapted from David Barton’s chapter in Cooperatives in Agriculture, David Cobia, ed., 1989.

The fraternal benefit society’s discussion is taken from Jim White, a former doctoral student of mine, and can be found in “Fraternal Benefit Societies,” Journal of Cooperatives 31(2016):1-31, available at http://tinyurl.com/yaxpx237. I have benefited immensely from conversations with Chris Kopka on this topic.

There is a great deal of information on the “Rochdale Pioneers;” my discussion comes from Weavers of Dreams by David Thompson, which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yb7xb2sk and Brett Fairbairn’s The Meaning of Rochdale, available at tinyurl.com/y7hampak.

Much of my exposure to worker and housing cooperatives come from Tom Pierson, who has researched and studied worker cooperatives in depth.

The history of loyalty programs and clubs comes from a variety of sources and there is no one single reference piece that I am aware of now.

The USDA definition of a cooperative and of the three principles of cooperation were created in the early 1980s by a national task force of cooperative scholars, and have been widely disseminated. One place to find them is the USDA Cooperative Information Report 11 entitled “Co-op Essentials: What They Are and the Role of Members, Directors, Managers, and Employees,” which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ycvp2wnz. The ICA principles in relation to these principles can be found at tinyurl.com/y93j4zg2.

The marketing year has been well studied. My earliest exposure to it was through publications read in graduate school and authored by agricultural economists associated with the Giannni Foundation of Agricultural Economics and based at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis. Much of this work was later summarized in a chapter by Richard Sexton and Julian Alston entitled “The Giannni Foundation and the Economics of Collective Action in the Marketing of California Farm Products,” which was published in 2009 in Foundation Contributions to California Agriculture, and is available at http://tinyurl.com/ybonm6wp.

The information on commonality of purpose is presented in many previous textbooks on cooperatives. The examples cited are ones used by my colleagues Chris Kopka, Tom Pierson, David Swanson, and myself in a class we teach in the University of Minnesota Law School.

Very little has been formally written about mutualism within the context of mutual insurance. The information presented here comes from discussions with my colleague Chris Kopka as well as work done with Jim White. One of his essays on a certain type of mutual can be found in a joint publication in “Minnesota Township Mutual Fire Insurance: Determinants of Survival, 1974–2010,” Journal of Cooperatives, 28(2014):1-26, available at http://tinyurl.com/ydg9q3ft.

There appears to be no one who has articulated the neoclassical economic theory of mutualism; it would be a good research topic for a graduate student