Common meritocracy in co-operatives: Overview of the key domains of

expertise
(Early draft of preliminary results of pilot study)

Ryszard Stocki1
1

University of Mondragon, MIK, Coop. Oati

SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty in Katowice, Poland

Abstract
Paper for Topic T5, STAGE 4, Level 1 Micro. The paper shows necessary perspectives in
Co-operative Education, Training and capacity Building. There is no real participation without
responsibility. There is no responsibility without efficacy. There is no efficacy without
expertise. This means that any democratic workplaces, and especially co-operatives, should
end up as common meritocratic institutions. When we look at what participative companies
look like (Stocki, et al. 2012; Laloux, 2014) we see they are nothing but common
meritocracies (Stocki, 2014). The problem is that many a time the creators of such companies
are often not aware of what they really do. As many experts, they are not aware of what their
expertise is about. If we want to make such companies more popular we have to go beyond
charismatic leaders and create management schools teaching how to create common
meritocracy systems. In my research, I am trying to investigate nine key fields of expertise
that pertain such systems and two aspects that have to be taken into account while creating
personal and organizational development plans. For the beginning, I offer a diagnosis of the
level of expertise people have on each level, in order to find out how far they are from the
ideal. I propose to diagnose the following domains:
1. Agency/Control; 2. Expertise in personal development; 3. Listening skill as a measure of
interpersonal expertise; 4 Implicit Co-operative Management Knowledge; 5. Business
literacy; 6. Economic literacy 7. Lifestyle expertise. These domains of expertise should be
viewed in the context of 8. Co-operative recognition of human dignity; and 9. Cultural
Horizontal-Vertical, Individualistic-Collectivist personal orientation.
In my paper, I am going to present the tools developed during the first year of the research
and first preliminary results of the pilot research on 34 participants and show two individual
expertise profile.

Common meritocracy in co-operatives: Overview of the key domains of expertise

1. Introduction
1.1 Lifestyle and its antecedents
With the epidemiological data accumulated in the areas of marketing, medicine, criminology,
ethnography, there is no doubt that the key component of our future is the topic of lifestyle. If
only do we agree with the fact that lifestyle is responsible for 80% of illnesses nowadays, in
the USA alone where health care expenditures are around 3 trillion dollars (Forbes, 2016), we
speak of really great numbers. Pope Francis in his encyclical letter Laudato Si points out that
problems of global warning can be solved if we change our lifestyles. Lifestyle is
recommended by McKinsey to be the main market for co-operatives (McKinsey Report,
2012), the addressee seems to be the right one because as (Cox, 2015) claims co-operatives
are lifestyle companies. If this is so co-operative members have to have a good lifestyle
template to manage their knowledge in this area. There is no better discipline that knows most
in lifestyle as lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle for them is nothing more than health behaviours of
the population which translates to the health of the population (Maibach et al, 2007). I have
used the Maicbach's model as an inspiration for the selection of fields of expertise that have to
be included in the. In the domains of influence they enlist five domains of influence: (1)
Individual, (2) Social networks, (3) Population or community, (4) Local level, (5) Distal level.
These are based on (6) Attributes of people and (7) Attributes of place.
I would only consider Lifestyle as a transdisciplinary domain of expertise that integrates the
other domains. For the first conceptualization of the meritocratic content of co-operative
lifestyle knowledge I have selected several disciplines that, according to me best reflect the
what we have to know to effectively meet the challenge of lifestyle management and control.
On individual level it should be represented by the domain of Stress control or Agency and
the domain which helps the agency Personal development domain. Social networking is
best represented by Listening skill, which is fundamental to any interpersonal relationships
and communication. Population and community on co-operative level requires special Cooperative specific management knowledge. Understanding of local level is best reflected,
according to me, in the Business literacy. As it has to include understanding markets,
advertising, processes, and finance. Finally, the distal level is probably best reflected in
Economic literacy. While looking for attributes of people that would be most important in
co-operative context, I chose Individual cultural orientation in two dimensions: VerticalHorizontal orientation and Individualist-Collectivist orientation. Finally I propose to define
the attribute of place in terms of Co-operative Values as the best reflection of what stylewise the co-operative members are exposed to. The whole model is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Domains of expertise for the meritocratic model of co-operative lifestyle.

Source: The author's design

1.2. Why should meritocracy be based on expertise?

There is likely no more destructive myth in human history than that of the noble savage
the innocent being uncorrupted by civilizing influences. In fact, the persistence of this
myth has probably contributed more to the destruction of cultures and civilizations than
overtly violent acts like the burning of libraries. The myth of the noble savage is worse as it
discourages people from using libraries in the first place. It encourages people to believe that
passively following your instincts and not developing the potential of agency is the best way
to go.
To believe in the noble savage in co-operatives is to believe that members need minimum
knowledge or guidance in order to participate in governance of the co-op and sensibly vote at
GAs. The myth is visible in general education that slowly abandons shaping of students
characters. Similarly co-operatives rarely discuss the difficulty to meet the demands of Cooperative Values and Principles. New co-op members are not adequately taught how to abide
by values such as democracy, equality, solidarity, honesty, openness, and caring for others.
This educational gap is particularly worrisome for co-operatives who are, by definition,
person-oriented and expect their members to live by these values. I believe that, with access to
the appropriate tools, personal growth in all the domains we enumerated in section 1.1 can be
developed in the same way as any other knowledge or skill. For this purpose, we need
deliberate practice.

More recently, the OECD proposed the following definition: "Literacy is using printed
and written information to function in society, to achieve ones goals and to develop ones
knowledge and potential." This definition served as a basis to create the International Adult
Literacy Survey (IALS). It was measured by tasks from the domains of Home and Family,
Health and Safety, Community and Citizenship, Consumer Economics, Work, Leisure, and
Recreation. To be considered literate, the respondents had to demonstrate their understanding
of a variety of texts deemed essential for functioning in society (e.g., consumer
questionnaires, food and medicine labels, work procedures, etc.). The first survey was
deployed in 2000 in 12 countries. It showed that only about 20% of the population of the 12
most developed countries reached the highest (fifth) level of literacy, allowing them to
understand, for example, a complex consumer satisfaction report. After this first deployment,
the survey was updated and became "OECD Skills Outlook" and the survey is now
regularly deployed in 24 countries. The conclusions of the most recent 2013 report are
interesting for co-operatives. In all countries, individuals with lower proficiency in literacy
are more likely than those with better literacy skills to report poor health, to believe that they
have little impact on political processes, and not to participate in associative or volunteer
activities. In most countries, they are also less likely to trust others (OECD, 2013).
In studying deliberate practice, psychologists investigated practitioners of many
disciplines: musicians, sportspersons, software engineers, chess players, etc. They compared
amateurs who performed only on the basis of their experience or infrequent and unorganized
training to those who were exceptionally successful in their domains. They found that all real
professional expertise requires deliberate practice on a regular basis. While the deliberate
practice differs depending on the domain, it usually comprises: (1) slow, sequential progress
based on acquiring elementary skills before the more complex are learned; (2) enough time
for daily practice; (3) guidance of coaches and teachers who propose more and more
challenging tasks; (4) first feedback from experts and peers, then the ability to self-monitor;
(5) questioning one's own knowledge and skill by constantly confronting oneself with new
advances in the domain1.
1.3. Expertise is domain specific
In psychology, there are various theories relating to the conceptual frameworks that
people use to understand and organize the world around them. These theories look at how
people use frames of reference to try to represent the very complicated realities we deal with
every day. For example, in the case of a natural concept such as Fruit, we conjure up the
image of an apple, as a representative of this large domain of things known as fruit. We do not
picture all the different fruit we know to exist on this planet at once. But interestingly this
does not apply to other domains. There is no typical "feeling" or typical "movement". The
structure of each core domain is different. We have to practice them separately and acquire the
knowledge in a different way.
When it comes to conceptualizing the domain of our social life researchers have found
that our frame of reference is more complex. Social life is a secondary domain made up of a
set of core domains such as attachment, power, coalition and reciprocity (Bugental, 2000).
But surprisingly, when it comes to the secondary domain of business even though it is a
very significant part of modern life very few studies have been done in cognitive nature of
the business domains.

Erickson, K. A. (2006). The Influence of experience and deliberate practice on the development of superior
expert performance. In: Erickson, K. A., et al.. (Eds). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Indeed, many disciplines such as business, economics or even medicine tend to

dehumanize their customers, workers or suppliers. This may be related to the core domain of
power. When managers use the conceptual framework of human resources they tend to
classify individuals in terms of abstract concepts like productivity and sales numbers.
They do not see their workers as individuals with feelings, who may experience good days
and bad days due to factors in their personal lives. Such dehumanization is easy to be done at
the top executive level, where the top executives do not see those who are affected by their
decisions. A shop floor manager will usually have to see the human beings, otherwise may be
totally ineffective. It means, however, that many conventional companies have an inherent
conflict of conceptual frameworks they refer to. Co-operatives by definition assume values
which are inherently human. They were created not to bring profit but to meet different
human needs, including economic needs. We should differentiate between organizations
which are co-operatives by their nature, and those which are co-operatives only by their legal
structure. I daresay that if we are to avoid the dehumanization of co-operatives, we have to
know what co-operative frames of reference or conceptual domains of expertise are. The
framework of domains is the first set that could be tested for its utility in co-operative
development and education. In the next nine subchapters I am going to explain each of the
domains in more detail.
1.4. Agency
The question of agency is so important because it allows us to answer the question about the
meaning of our life. Determinism makes us just a means of biological forces carriers of
genes. Auto-determinism allows us to make choices. Free will appears when our nature or
our intentions are against acting in a given way. Philip Zimbardo conducted one of the most
spectacular experiments showing how people are determined by social roles they played in his
experimentally created prison at Stanfort University. Randomly selected into groups of
prisoners and guards they became very aggressive. The guards were humiliating the prisoners,
while the researcher thought he had finally discovered human nature. Many years after the
Stanford experiment became the rudiment of psychological studies, Zimbardo admitted that
he had stopped the experiment because his then fiance, Christine Maslach, in an act of
personal courage and free will, threatened she would not have married him if he had not
stopped the experiment. It is interesting that a scholar who spent all his life on the analysis of
evil determination in man, now is conducting research on the free acts of heroism (more at:
http://heroicimagination.org/). One of the many definitions of courage, and one that I like the
most, is to behave differently from all the others. In organizational context it may be called
whistleblowing. In acts of whistleblowing, individuals or minority groups indicate that some
human value is being broken. In the same way, Maslach intervened when she saw human
dignity being compromised for the sake of a scientific experiment. So free will may mean to
risk losing something in order to protect the higher values. It is a defining feature of a human
being, or better of a person. It differentiates us from animals. It is also an indispensable
precondition of responsibility. Without free will there would be no legal responsibility, no
courts, no judges, no attorneys, no sentences, no prisons. It would be an interesting topic of a
fiction book to describe the world without free will. Of course tiredness, alcohol, drugs,
immaturity of the frontal lobe of the brain and many other conditions weaken our free will. It

should be noted here that people who follow their instincts are more predictable and more
easily manipulated. The deterministic ideology highly enhances marketing efforts and
research.
1.5. Personal development
This research gives us hope that the myth of the noble savage will not overtake us. Our
society can come to appreciate that we must treat personal growth as a field worthy of both
detailed study and judicious application, equal in importance to medicine or physics. We have
to put in careful and conscious work in order to develop appropriate expertise in personal
growth and we need to develop methods to measure our success. Fortunately for us, all
throughout human history people have been intuitively aware of the importance of focussed
and self-controlled practice in the pursuit of personal growth, so we do not have to start from
scratch. Every religion has its spiritual growth model, and many philosophers and
psychologists have proposed models for personal development as well. As such, our
challenge, with MyIndex, will be to select a model that best suits our goals, rather than to
create a new one. Many spiritual growth models are inward-looking, guiding the practitioner
towards the ultimate goal of self-actualization. As co-operators, we care not only about our
good life, but also about the good of others. Thus, all the self-realization or self-actualization
models do not quite fit the values of caring for others, solidarity, and social responsibility.
1.6. Interpersonal expertise
There are many skills that decide on whether our relationships are good or bad. Many
researchers point to the most elementary skill of listening that allows really good relationships
with others. The essence of listening is highly related to free will because to listen you have to
direct your attention on the other person, and it is not easy to control attention. When we were
describing the levels of happiness, the animal happiness is concentrated on the objects of
desire. In the second level, we are concentrated on ourselves only, and in the third level we
are concentrated on others. But such a switch of attention is not an easy one. If co-operatives
are person oriented, their members also have to be person oriented and listening is the most
elementary skill to be learned by co-operators if they do not know it already. We may wonder
why we should bother about this skill. The problem is we often do not realize what good
listening is.
Authors of the questionnaire enumerate several studies that show how important the skill of
listening is. It was proven to impact emotional improvement. It resulted in better medical care,
and later with the satisfaction of the health care providers. It increased satisfaction in business
transactions.
1.7. Co-operative Tacit Knowledge
The corporate model of the 20th century is questioned now. The development of new
organizational forms based on participation in networks, democratic or even meritocratic
decision-making, etc. ask for new conceptualization of management expertise. Old and well
known organizational patterns such as worker co-ops may be a basis for such
conceptualizations. Although they are very specific organizations, there are very few
handbooks of co-operative management. The co-operative specific case studies are scarce and
support systems and educational resources incomparable in number to those for investorowned companies. The paper describes two studies. In Study 1, seven co-operative experts
both from academia and practice were asked to draw concept maps of successful worker cooperatives. They used Cmap Tools in this effort, a popular and easy-to-use application for
6

generating and analyzing concept maps. The content of the maps was analyzed to yield a set
of management themes most common among the experts. In Study 2, on the basis of the
themes 20 co-operative case studies were developed to form a Tacit Knowledge Inventory for
Cooperators. We sent the inventory to 10 successful managers in the co-operative
management. Their answers will form the key to the Survey. This practical tool is meant to
test tacit knowledge of co-operators, especially co-op managers. On the basis of the results
obtained from cooperators, an exploratory analysis is planned to reveal the implicit structure
of co-operative management knowledge.
1.8. Business Literacy
Co-operatives are business organizations and business organizations have to analyze their
situation precisely, set appropriate goals, and monitor their attainment while engaging all
employees in the process. The condition of the co-operative, its weak and strong points as
well as marketplace challenges, must be analyzed on an ongoing basis so that any problems or
deviation from the plan are noticed as soon as possible and appropriate measures are taken by
members and employees, within the scope of their responsibilities and competencies. How
best is it to set goals and then monitor their attainment? The solution is to understand and
make use of critical numbers this chapter will treat their qualities, function, selection
process, and implementation.
Shaw and Weber2 point out that those who have not reached a minimum managerial literacy
level may not understand the conversations conducted by their business partners.
Unfortunately, Shaw and Weber's list of the 1400 must-know terms for managerial literacy is
25 years old. It should certainly be supplemented and updated if it is to be of any use. I
decided to create a test of business literacy based on "The 75 measures every manager needs
to know". All you have to do is click whether you know a term or not. I also compiled a list of
elementary economic terms that should be known to anyone who wants to understand the
their world.
1.9. Economic Literacy
But I believe there is one solution, though unfortunately not an easy one. Starting with
the story of my daughter and finishing with world conflicts, in most of the situations that
cause our problems and result in victims, there is one reason: our ignorance. If we understand
the world and its complexities we, as societies, can make better choices and build a better
world. Why do I believe this? Because the economic history of nations teaches us that human
development is strictly related to knowledge. A Polish economist, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski,
formulated the following law:
The structure of the economic mechanisms is complex (...). Political and economic
development and progress is a quantitative function of understanding of the
mechanisms. It is equivalent to the relationship between the number of people who
understand the assumptions, goals and methods, often distant in their consequences
2

and the number of people who are driven by ad hoc or thoughtless reflexes in a given
society3 (p. 95)
Kwiatkowski has demonstrated the functioning of the law in our entire economic
history starting from antiquity up to the present times. The problem is that the complexities so
far are incomparable to the complexities of today. Our private life so far (until ca 100 years
ago) was based on the concept of wisdom, which in turn was based on experience and
knowledge. Many of the wise people of the past like Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci, Adam
Smith were able to be experts in many disciplines at the same time. However, with the new
advances in science and technology (especially electronics, information technology and
biotechnology) there is no place for interdisciplinarity and lengthy accumulation of
experience. As a result, the general public consists of the ignorant who yield their destiny to
narrow specialists and are rather easily manipulated, mainly through appropriate selection or
exposure, by those who want to sell more of their products and services.
1.10. Lifestyle expertise
The question is how do we know whether our lifestyle and accordingly food and
environment are below the norm. I propose to use the methodology used by occupational
medicine to evaluate the risk associated with a given place of life or work. A simple equation
is used to measure the risk.
Risk Assessment Factor = Consequence x Exposure x Probability.
The consequence is scaled from 10 (death) to 2 (first aid injury such as cuts, sprains,
headaches). Exposure is scaled from 10 (every hour of the day), 8 (every day), 6 (every
week), 4 (every month), to 3 (once a year). The probability represents the chance that
exposure to the hazard would result in injury or illness.
Occupational doctors then calculate the risk and evaluate it on the following scale:
801 to 1000 the highest risk,
601-800 higher risk,
401-600 high risk,
201-400 lower risk, and finally
8 200 the lowest risk (Reese 2003).
Although there are no data available to make such detailed calculations for most walks of
our lives, we can still use the logic to help us make some decisions. Let us take a few
examples. For instance we want to know whether we should be jogging in the morning or not.
In most large cities you can find the level of pollution. For instance Halifax Air Quality
Health Index can be found for each day at the web site:
https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/nsaq-001_e.html. All we have to do is to look not only
at the weather, but also the air quality at a given time. But what if we are considering moving
to a new city4. We can use a web page that compares general parameters of pollution of water
and air in a city: http://www.numbeo.com/pollution/. Unfortunately there are no small towns
and villages there, but on the other hand, these are places that are usually less risky. It should
3

Kwiatkowski, E. (1947). Zarys dziejw gospodarczych wiata (Eng. The Outline of the economic history of
the world). Warsaw: PIW.

Some stress consequences of city life can be found in this Science article:
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/3830/CityLivingStress.pdf

be noted that www.numbeo.com also records other data such as prices, salaries, crime, health
care, etc.
While using this method we can also take into account possible consequences of commuting
from the suburbs (healthier) to the jobs in the city centers (less healthy). This may influence
our decision about the choice of workplace.
1.11. Personal attributes culture orientation
Collectivism is probably rooted in the social development of human communities. In the
times of strong dependence on natural forces and dangers the survival of an individual was
almost impossible, this is why hunters-gatherers were co-operating out of necessity without
having much choice, like many other social animals. Individualism, on the other hand, is
based on individual human development. A small baby is the most individualistic and egoistic
creature on earth caring only for its survival. Naturally, in the process of socialization the
child is encouraged to abandon its individualistic nature and taught to co-operate. If we still
lived in the hunters-gatherers times we could probably have one scale dimension relying, to a
great extent, on instinctive behaviours. However, this was a rather deterministic world. About
ten thousand years ago, something happened in our human history that made it possible for
both tendencies to be present in our lives at the same time. We were given or created
(depending on our faith) the skill to cultivate the land and grow animals. That meant the
possibility of cornering the surpluses, becoming independent of the need to consume
immediately, but first and foremost the independence of the community. Some of the land or
cattle owners could survive on the basis of ownership, not community alone. According to
me, this is the moment when we became real, exceptional beings because from this moment
we had a choice to share with others or look for our own individual prosperity. With this
choice we became human as we could really execute free will, but at the same time we have
gained the possibility of rejecting others, and exploiting them and their choice.
We as offspring of our ancestors are on different levels of collectivism and individualism
depending on how we were brought up (family, community, culture influence). Researchers
distinguish differences between national cultures.
There are two important factors: individualism and collectivism. Every situation requires a
different behavioural pattern, which will be a mixture of the two in different proportions.
1.12. Institutional attributes co-operative values
Co-operatives are not peculiar inventions of Robert Owen or other socialist thinkers. They
existed all throughout human history but under different guises. Cheng and Fleischmann
(2010) have analyzed 12 most popular inventories of human values used for business
purposes. They arrived at a Meta Inventory of 16 values that were present in all of the
inventories. Their list includes: 1. Freedom, 2. Helpfulness, 3. Accomplishment, 4. Honesty,
5. Self-respect, 6. Broad-mindedness, 7. Creativity, 8. Equality, 9. Intelligence, 10.
Responsibility, 11. Social order, 12. Wealth, 13. Competence, 14. Justice, 15. Security, 16.
Spirituality. When you match the list with the list of the Co-operative Values: (A) self-help,
(B) self-responsibility, (C) democracy, (D) equality, (E) equity and (F) solidarity, and the Co-

operative principles of (1) Voluntary and Open Membership; (2) Democratic Member
Control; (3) Member Economic Participation; (4) Autonomy and Independence; (5)
Education, Training and Information; (6) Co-operation among Co-operatives; (7) Concern for
Community, there seems to be only one difference: co-operatives do not generally accept
number 16. Spirituality.

2. Method
2.1. Subjects of the pilot study
The participants to the study were recruited by many channels. I advertised the research on
three co-operative oriented conferences, the information about the study was disseminated
through several co-operative mailing lists which reach international audience but are mainly
concentrated on Canada and the US. I also published several posts on LinkedIn, and
advertised them on Co-operative related discussion groups. I also used private channels and
encouraged colleagues in co-ops to encourage their friends to participate. I may estimate that
the information about this research reached ca 5 000 people all around the world. The interst
in particiption was expressed by 47 persons who received Informed Consent Form. 37 signed
the Informed Consent Form and received the link to the questionnaires. 34 of them completed
the questionnaires (15 males and 19 females). Every participant's results are calculated
individually and personally tailored report is send to everyone. So far 7 participants received
their reports, however they have not sent their feedback yet as the final book which analyzes
the results has 160 pages.
2.2. Main tools
Agency. The authors of The Lifestyle Appraisal Questionnaire Part 2 consider the tool
mainly as a tool for measuring the level of stress. As the scale is highly correlated with the
Locus of Control of Behaviour, we should be convinced that stress and control are two sides
of the same phenomenon. It is natural that we shall be more stressed when we do not control
our life. If things happen to us, and we are not even informed of the possible scenarios, we are
more frightened than when we know what to expect.
Personal development. I must say, I spent a lot of time looking for a ready tool that
would measure the level of deliberate practice in our personal growth, showing to what extent
we are under the influence of what happens to us, and to what extent we deliberately make
choices in this domain. Unfortunately, I did not find any which would satisfy our needs. This
is why I decided to create my own one.
Listening skill. The Active-Emphatic Listening Scale. There is a plethora of tools that
refer to different social skills, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence. Realising that
the whole set of tools will be long, I was looking for something most essential and concrete at
the same time. What makes us best leaders, spouses, parents, partners, friends? It is the
concentration on the other person in other words, our ability to listen to others. It is why I
chose this tool that may be a good substitute for many lengthy tools.The authors divided the
listening process into three stages: sensing, processing and responding. In the test I propose I
enumerate what each stage means and then I give your results.
Co-operative Tacit Knowledge. We have collected 20 real case studies from two cooperative consultants. We changed them in such a way that the co-ops are not recognized and
created 10 possible solutions to each of the cases. So, initially, we had 200 questions. Then I
found 7 experienced co-op managers; people who had spent at least 20 years in co-ops
reaching top executive positions. I asked them to evaluate those 200 possible solutions to the
20 problems. My experts came from the UK (3 persons), the US (1), and Canada (3). They
10

courageously spent at least 3 hours deciding what was the value of each solution. Then I
selected the 10 most agreed on (least controversial) cases in such a way that they still cover
the main areas of management. I created a file with the revealed choices and sent them again
to the experts asking them to change their evaluations after they had seen the others views.
Some of them have not found time to do it, but 4 of them sent me their slightly changed
evaluations. In this way, I knew what experienced experts think about each solution.
Interestingly enough, they agreed 5 in ca 57% of solutions, but still disagreed in the remaining
ones.
Economic literacy. If co-operators are to be persuaded to the form of their enterprises,
they should not only understand the elementary economic terms but also understand how cooperative economy differs from ordinary ones.
Lifestyle expertise. The Lifestyle Appraisal Questionnaire. Part 1.
As a starting point, the first part of the questionnaire is, in fact, a questionnaire of our health
condition and health habits. We should remember that the questionnaire was constructed in
1996, almost 20 years ago. Since then there has been a lot of research that shows the
harmfulness of many more factors than those enumerated in the questionnaire. The only
exception was coffee, which, as a drink, has recently been found healthier than expected in
1996. The positive and negative impact of its stimulating function does not change, of course.
But, otherwise the questionnaire covers the most important aspects, which have not changed.
Institutional attributes co-operative values. After statistical analyses of the results from
8 US and Canadian co-ops, we divided the tool into two separate tools. The first part Cooperative Values and Principles - gives a general view of how co-op values are present in a
co-op and how they are reflected in co-operative principles. The second part Management
Perspectives - views 14 aspects of co-operative management. When answering the
questionnaire, the respondents are asked to decide to what degree they agree with a given
statement. If a respondent "totally disagrees" with a statement the organization is far from the
ideal, if she "totally agrees" the organization is close to the ideal. To objectify the results we
do two things. We ask similar questions that formulate a scale and ask many people in the coop to respond. The more the scale reflects a phenomenon, the more similar are the answers
between different persons and between the questions.

3. Results
In order to visualize the individual results I have recalculated the results into one 0 100
scale. In case where a tool gave more than one result, I have summed the results where it
made sense (Listening, Co-operative Tacit Knowledge) or chose one of the scales that best
represents a feature important for co-operatives. In the case of Cultural orientation I chose
Vertical Collectivist orientation as most important for co-operative functioning, In the case of
OpenIndex, I chose sum of Honesty and Openness as the two scales explained most of the
variance when the tool was constructed. From Economic literacy, I chose the new economy
terms and from Personal development, the number which referred to one's own choices.
5

The standard variation between them was less than 1.

3.1. General results

In Table 1, I present the mean results of all 34 participants the transformation formula and
new transformed result which formed the benchmark for comparisons for individual
participants.
Table 1. The most important mean results, formulas and the recalculated result.
Scale selected for comparison Worst Best

ReRescaled scaled
worst best

Mean
Original
result (x)

Formula

Re-scaled
mean
result

1. Co-op orientation: Vertical

Collectivist

20

100

49.2

(x-4)/0.16

49.2

2. Co-op exposure: Sum of

honesty and openness

14

100

27.6

(x-2)/0.12

67.3

72

100

15.8

(72-x)/0.72

73.7

4. Personal developmentYour
choices

100

11.4

78.2

5. Listening skill

300

100

11.2

x/3

85.1

6a Co-op Tacit knowledge:

Values and needs

86

100

20.9

(86-x1)/0.86

75.6

6b Co-op Tacit Knowledge

62

100

15.6

(62-x2)/0.62

74.9

58

100

16.9

(58-x3)/0.52

70.8

206

100

53.4

(206-x1-x2x3)/2.06

74.1

7. Business literacy

100

100

32.6

25.4

8. Economic expertise:
Knowledge of new economy
concepts

100

217.2

72.4

73

100

72.5

(73-x)/0.73

70.4

3. Agency/Stress

Cohesion
6c Co-op Tacit Knowledge
Co-op Management
6. Co-op Tacit Knowledge

9. Lifestyle
Source: the author

What we can immediately see is the very low result in the scale of business literacy. On
average participants knew only 25% of the Key Performance Indicators. Interestingly the
participants feel strongest in Listening skill. Vertical-Collectivist orientation most important
for creating co-operatives was also not very favourable for this kinf or organizations.

3.2. Individual expertise profiles

In the remaining part of the presentation of the results I will present two characteristic profiles
of individual participants.
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Profile 1. An expert in a friendly organizational environment.

Vertical Collectivist
100

Co-op Values

Lifestyle

80
60
40
Agency

20

Economic literacy

Personal Development

Business Literacy

Listening

Co-op Tacit Knowledge

As we can see this expert has all measures above the average except personal development.
Perhaps being an expert does not make it easy do find appropriate development tools.
Certainly this should be the main focus of development.

Profile 2. A young professional in an unfriendly organizational environmental

Vertical Collectivist
100

Co-op Values

Lifestyle

80
60
40
Agency

20

Economic literacy

Personal Development

Business Literacy

Listening skill

Co-op Tacit Knowledge

We can see evident areas of personal development in Personal Development, Business

Literacy and Agency (Stress). Unfortunately this person does not have adequate support from
the institution he works for.

4. Discussion and conclusions

An invitation to participate in this research has reached at least several thousand people.
It is difficult for me to answer what differs respondents to my research from all the others.
What I know is that they were very exceptional persons. The expertise profiles of participants
show that we are divided. Marx and Engels cried in their Communist Manifesto: Workers of
the world Unite!. I do not think we need any uniting movement similar to communism. If I
notice a division it is a division between our competence and our lifestyles. The necessary
competencies do not creat a harmonuous whole. We are split internally. Everyone differently. I
mean this research to help people to unite themselves.
This project may be treated as co-operative coaching that is a person-oriented assistance
in individual professional development for those who work in co-operative or co-operative
like companies, but also in any other institution, that respects human dignity.
It is not easy to dismantle the complexities of mutual dependencies of lifestyle, economy,
democracy, media, science, technology, etc. We can intuitively follow common sense, but
have all our decisions been the best they could have been? I doubt it. We need a framework,
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like the periodic table in chemistry, which classifies and orders all the variety of our actions in
the reality around us. It has to be something more elementary than many ideological or
knowledge systems that are used today and which overlook the driving forces behind the
historical events. I hope the methodology developed in this research helps individual and cooperative development.

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The research is sponsored by the European Unions 7th FP International Outgoing

Fellowship Grant (623051) web page: www.stocki.org

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