Humanistic Governance in Democratic Organizations

Sonja Novkovic is a Professor of Economics and Academic Director of the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada. She is a member and former Chair of the International Cooperative Alliance Research Committee.Karen Miner is the Managing Director and a Governance Researcher for the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary’s University, Canada.Cian McMahon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. He has published in the fields of economic democracy, community development, heterodox economics, and economic inequality.

• Introduction.- Part 1.- Humanism and the cooperative enterprise – theoretical foundations.- Parsing dignity for organizations.- Cooperative governance in context.- Part 2.- Humanism and democracy in worker cooperatives.- Democratic cooperative governance: understanding the roles of the governing bodies.- Governance in Lincolnshire Consumer Cooperative.- Comparing governance systems in Cuban cooperatives:  a study of producer and worker cooperatives in agriculture, industry and services.- From theory to practice: social capital in agricultural cooperatives in Flanders, Belgium.- The governance of multistakeholder cooperatives in Mondragon: The evolving relationship among purpose, structure, and process.- Networking, governance, and stakeholder engagement of financial cooperatives: some national case studies.- Part 3.- Decades of radical self-management at a Venezuelan cooperative: Institutional distinctiveness and ideology.- Transformational resilience and future-ready cooperative governance systems.- Measuring transformational impact of cooperatives.