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Member-Owned Alternatives: Exploring Participatory Forms of Organising with Cooperatives

Published: 01 November 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Cooperatives are member-owned organisations, run for the common benefit of their members. While cooperatives are a longstanding way of organising, they have received little attention in CSCW. In this paper, through interviews with 26 individuals from 24 different cooperatives, our focus is an exploratory inquiry on how cooperatives could expand thinking into what future economies can look like and the part technologies may play in them. We discuss (1) the work to make the co-op work, that is, the special effort involved in managing an enterprise in a democratic and inclusive way, (2) the multiple purposes that cooperatives can serve for their members, well beyond financial benefit, and (3) ICT usage within cooperatives as a site of tension and dialogue. We conclude by discussing the meaning and measures of success in alternative economies, and lessons learned for CSCW scholarship on civic and societal organisations.

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    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 2, Issue CSCW
    November 2018
    4104 pages
    EISSN:2573-0142
    DOI:10.1145/3290265
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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    Published: 01 November 2018
    Published in PACMHCI Volume 2, Issue CSCW

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    Author Tags

    1. civic hci
    2. cooperative
    3. organisation
    4. platform cooperativism
    5. platform economy

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