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When Dionne Pohler was a child in Spalding, Saskatchewan, co-operatives were the only businesses in town.

The village of roughly 300 was served by a credit union and a Co-op Food Store, where the manager knew everyone’s name and let residents keep a tab. Pohler remembers it as a friendly and welcoming place.

Years later, while working towards her PhD, Pohler was employed by a retail co-op in Saskatoon. She then went on to research collective organizations — like labour unions and co-ops — before landing a teaching position at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business where her students were more likely to work for government or co-ops than the blue chip multinational corporations they discussed in class. 

But there were no case studies on co-op business practices in their textbooks — so Pholer wrote her own.

It’s estimated co-operative businesses employ more than 174,000 Canadians and they accounted for 2.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2019. Yet sector leaders say awareness of co-operative models is lacking, both in the general public and the business sector. Researchers say business schools have a greater role to play in promoting co-operative business models, but that bringing them onboard has been a challenge.

Pohler says the democratic, worker-owned business structure is far more relevant than most business schools acknowledge and should be included in business curricula as a matter of course.

“If you’re coming out of a business school and you’ve only ever learned about principles around governance, strategy, accounting and HR as they relate to large, investor-owned firms, then I think you’re doing a disservice to students who are going to be working in a wide variety of organizations,” Pohler says. “It’s interesting that we think about them as alternative forms of organizations, because in some ways they’re a dominant form of organization in this province.”

A 2022 study found the lack of awareness about co-operatives has been the greatest concern of those working in the sector for the last five years. Only a handful of universities offer dedicated courses on co-operatives and there’s only one graduate program in co-op management in Canada.

Those working in the field say not teaching young people about co-ops hurts the future success of the sector, by implying there are few successful alternatives to private businesses focused only on profits.

“If you’re only exposing people to the idea that the way we solve problems is through the heroic individual entrepreneur … it does foreclose the possibility that there might be alternate models that could better achieve the objectives you’re trying to meet,” Pohler says.

So why have a handful of Canadian universities embraced co-op education? And why won’t others follow suit?

Capitalist influence 

Currently, Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is the only Canadian post-secondary institution providing a graduate degree in co-op governance: a part-time, online masters of management in co-operatives and credit unions, through its International Centre for Co-operative Management. 

But Canada isn’t the only country with a dearth of co-op education. In 2020, the University of Newcastle stopped offering Australia’s only co-op management degree due to dwindling enrollment. 

Saint Mary’s rounds out its offerings with non-degree programs, including a diploma, a certificate, international study tours examining foreign co-op successes and a summer workshop in co-op law in Croatia.

“We’re constantly being influenced by capitalist organization models, so no one’s ever an expert in co-ops,” says managing director Karen Miner.

Miner’s interest in co-op studies was piqued by a series of workshops in Vancouver and Italy in 2006. On the board of what was Mountain Equipment Co-op at the time, she learned more in the classroom than she had sitting in business meetings.

“You have to have enough humbleness to step out of whatever organization you’re in, and imagine you might be able to learn something somewhere else,” she says.

And co-op studies don’t have to be limited to business school curricula, says Derya Tarhan, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. They can — and should — be taught in courses about community economic development.

 Tarhan, a long-time member of the co-op movement, includes them in the adult education and community development program he teaches and says learning about the co-op models has been particularly helpful for those working at non-profits.

The social goal of a co-op is to provide goods and services to a community rather than maximize profit for shareholders, Tarhan says, making them useful examples for classroom discussions about solidarity and community building, although thinking of them as businesses is still helpful.

Many of the daily decisions we make are similar to those made by businesses, Tarhan adds. Decisions about family, work and our individual goals all require participation from others, just like how a business management decision may involve different stakeholders.

“When I try to teach them something that may be out of their comfort zone, like the governance of co-ops or the economics of co-operatives, I try to make a linkage with their lives … so they can realize those connections,” Tarhan says.

Furthering co-op education

Tarhan is also on the board of the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation, a network of researchers interested in co-ops and community solidarity more broadly. He and his colleagues advocate for co-op education in universities. They’ve had some success ⁠— Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia offers an MBA in community economic development and hires co-op researchers as adjuncts ⁠— but Tarhan says the persistent lack of broader education suggests most universities aren’t interested in co-ops.

He says it’s just one of the barriers co-ops face when they’re considered “an inferior way of doing business” compared to private firms, alongside difficulties accessing capital and marketing to new customers.

Miner says the co-op awareness issue is systemic and can’t be solved by including co-ops in one-off courses. She would like to see broader co-op education in schools as well as universities. Otherwise programs like Saint Mary’s Master of Management will continue to cater to those already in the sector ⁠— right now involvement in co-ops is a requirement to enter the program.

If young people are exposed to viable alternatives to for-profit businesses, there may be further co-ops established in the future, Tarhan adds.

“The fact that generations grow up without knowing about this option is very detrimental, both economically and socially. And it makes us believe that the only way is the traditional shareholder-owned way,” Tarhan says.

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