Cooperatives Composed of Interdependent Independent Teams

The organizational model described in this paper is intended to increase the proportion of cooperatives in the economy.The motivation behind this paper is to help reduce wealth inequalities. Increasing the proportion of cooperatives in the economy would reduce global wealth inequalities because cooperatives do not have the significant wage inequalities prevalent in traditional capitalist companies.In the paper, it is shown that there are many industries where there are no large cooperatives. 71% of the largest 500 companies and organizations, with 74% of the employees, are in industries where none of the 500 in those industries are cooperatives or mutuals.This raises the question: why are there no large cooperatives in these industries? An explanation of why large cooperatives are restricted to a few industries is that their organizational models are unsuitable for other industries.The focus of this paper is on cooperatives and not mutuals because the proposed cooperative model can apply to many more industries than a mutual model. And this model could also be used by mutuals.Looking at the history of the largest cooperatives, it is seen that they began as networks of independent cooperatives.As they grew, large cooperatives formed additional teams and departments to support the networks of cooperatives. Many of these additional teams and departments could not productively function independently. But these additional teams and departments are not core to this organizational model.A limitation of the large cooperatives’ organizational model is that the basic unit is an independent cooperative. Because of this limitation, such a model is not applicable to most large companies and organizations. The model is based on an organizational unit that cannot be used to build most types of large companies and organizations.A basic organizational unit that could be used to build most types of large companies and organizations is the self-managing team. Self-managing teams are being increasingly used in traditional capitalist companies. And networks of self-managing teams are also becoming increasingly popular.So, an organizational model that removes the limitation of the large cooperatives’ organizational model is of cooperatives composed of interdependent independent cooperative teams. The proposed model is of large cooperatives that are networks of small cooperative self-governing teams, where these teams are legally independent companies, such as a limited liability company, or a worker cooperative in jurisdictions where there are cooperative incorporation codes. But most of the teams would be unable to productively function independently. While the teams are legally independent, they would be - in practice - interdependent.This organizational model could apply to almost any type of large organization in almost any industry