Co-operatives and three-dimensional sustainability / : Cooperatives and three-dimensional sustainability

The objectives of the centre are: • to develop and offer university courses that provide an understanding of co-operative theory, principles, development, structures, and legislation • to undertake original research into co-operatives • to publish co-operative research, both that of Centre staff and of other researchers Our publications are designed to disseminate and encourage the discussion of r [...] O C C A S I O N A L P A P E R S E R I E S #14–02 2 S C H R Ö D E R “CO-OPERATIVES AS A COLLECTIVE PURSUIT 1 OF SUSTAINABILITY” Although economic and social viability as well as the preservation of natural resources were major reasons for establishing the first co-operatives, the founders of the (modern) co-operative movement probably did not use the term “sustainability.” But since the Internation [...] The co-operative literature reveals essays and case studies from different parts of the world arguing in favour of the mainly economic and social, but since the early 1990s also environmental, added values of co-operatives in many sectors, with the majority being in finance, agricultural production, and consumer services. [...] On the local, regional, and even national and global (meso and macro economic) levels — and in consequence of the attributes mentioned above — co-operatives contribute to the stabilization of the number of businesses/SMEs and regional economies by diversifying the range of businesses and ownership forms (ICA 2013, 15; Sanchez Bajo and Roelants 2011, 111; Brockmeier 2 2007, 638–57); they contribute [...] At the macro level, one can find a prominent example of the economic and social dimen- sions of co-operative sustainability in the fight for humane working and living conditions that shaped the public perception of co-operatives most prominently in the late nineteenth and early twen tieth centuries.