Co-operatives have been shaped by changes in the workplace since emerging as formally registered institutions in the middle of the nineteenth century. In a broad sense it was the changing nature of work (rural and urban) and in remuneration practices that triggered the development of consumer co-operatives, rural co-ops and credit societies. All of these co-operative "impulses" were, and continue to be, shaped by assumptions about workplace relationships and by related understandings of how co-operative organisations adapt to technological change. It has, however, been a dimension of co-operative development usually only considered in passing in most analyses of co-operatives and is an under-explored issue within the field of Co-operative Studies.

Even more obviously, the worker co-operative movement, the fourth of the great nineteenth century North Atlantic co-operative traditions, was (and is) directly related to the workplace changes associated with industrial as well as post-industrial development. The worker co-operative movement is noted for its deep and passionate commitment to workplace democracy and the cultivation of "associative intelligence" as a way to cope with the complexities, possibilities and threats of workplace change. The power of this dimension of the co-operative experience is abundantly obvious historically in the worker co-operative movements of France (with its commitments to associationisme and solidarité), northern Italy, Argentina, and India as well as in the activities of CICOPA (the international body for worker co-operatives). Today, it is perhaps most obviously evident within the development of many social co-operatives in which the organizing framework is provided by caregivers, for example, in health, daycare, and adult facilities. The current interest in social co-operatives, in fact, is largely driven by the desire to understand and to deal more creatively with the ways in which those engaged in delivering and receiving services organize the institutions in which the exchanges take place.

The role of the workplace, therefore, can be seen as both a central preoccupation of co-operative enterprise and co-operative thought and as a way to understand how and why co-operatives of all kinds react to economic, technological and political change. It should be one of the most important preoccupations of Co-operative Studies.

Despite this importance, however, the role of the workplace within co-operatives has received little attention in the academy, especially its English-speaking circles, and, rather curiously, it has rarely been directly and consciously considered within most general co-operative movements or in understandings of co-operative theory.

Ian MacPherson and others at BCICS are working on a book, to be published in 2006, on the theme of co-operatives and workplace change. It will be an exploratory examination of this subject, derived from a survey of the historical experience and a consideration of how co-operatives have been buffeted by workplace change historically and how they are responding to workplace change today around the world.

This project is funded in part by a grant from the International Labour Organisation. It will demonstrate how workplace changes have consistently altered co-operatives throughout time, posing threats and opportunities to their economic viability and profoundly affecting their institutional "cultures" as well as organisational frameworks. It will discuss concrete and potential ways in which co-operatives are responding to such issues as "deskilling", outsourcing, globalisation, employee empowerment, flat management structures, youth employment, gender issues and the extension of working lives. BCICS will jointly publish the book in collaboration with the ILO.

Ian MacPherson