Home / The Leadership Library / Idaho Institutions / Cooperatives
Cooperatives
Member-owned institutions that move crops and deliver power: governance by the people served, and the particular obligations that creates.
-
01
The Member Who Deals Elsewhere
A cooperative competes for the business of the people who own it. Appeals to loyalty are the wrong instrument, and they signal that the institution has stopped being competitive.
-
02
The Manager Who Has Been There Thirty Years
A long-serving competent manager gradually becomes the institution, and the board becomes an audience. Nothing is wrong until the day they leave, and then everything is.
-
03
When the Members Are the Owners
A cooperative board answers to people who are simultaneously its customers, its owners, and its electorate. Those three roles want different things, and the board holds all of them at once.