Peter Davis
BA (Hon.) MPhil. (Dist.), PhD. Chartered Fellow CIPD.
Special Advisor, International Co-operative Alliance HRD Committee.
Associate Practioner The Higher Education Academy
e-mail peterdavis@newharmonypress.com
Director, Unit for Membership Based Organisations, the School of Management, University of Leicester
Editor, International Journal of Co-operative Management
“要参阅中文文本，请由英文尾页往下移动”
Content
Look for the following headers below.
Activities
Key ideas with sub-headings.
Co-operative Management and Organisational Development
Fighting Poverty and Exploitation
Religion
Key Publications
Abstract of recent conference paper
Management page (will commence 1st May, 2007)
A regular monthly reflection on issues confronting managers of
co-operative and other membership based organisations. See also within Links, Unit for Membership Based Organisations, School of Management, University of Leicester.
Activities
In 2002 he was made a Rabobank Fellow in Co-operative Agri-business. In 2003 Dr Davis was appointed as one of a panel of sixteen special advisers to the United Nations. In 2006 he was officially recognised at the opening ceremony of the first Co-operative University in Africa for services to co-operative management development in Africa.
The founding editor of the International Journal of Co-operative Management and a well known figure in the co-operative movement’s global development forums. He has given presentations and conducted workshops for among others the World Council of Credit Unions, Asian Confederation of Credit Unions, Canadian Co-operative Association, The Consumer Co-operative Institute of Japan and many African governmental and federal co-operative agencies from South Africa to Ethiopia.
He has twice been Chair of the UK Society for Co-operative Studies and a board member of Industrial Common Ownership Finance Ltd and was the founding treasurer of The Leicester and Leicestershire Co-operative Development Agency.
A former Trade Union Officer and Industrial Tribunal Officer with USDAW Dr Davis has successfully represented workers on cases of discrimination, equal pay, minmum pay, victimisation, unfair dismissal and redundacy. He is recognised in an official history of USDAW for his pioneering organisation work amongst Asian workers in the 1970s where he negotiated the first collective agreement in the UK to be translated into a foriegn language.
He and John Donaldson founded the New Harmony Press in 1998.
Key ideas
Co-operative Management and Organisational Development
He pioneered a distance learning based management development programme focused on the needs of co-operative managers and along with John Donaldson developed a distinct set of principles and approach to co-operative management which they defined as Co-operative Value Based Management (See Davis, 1995, Davis and Donaldson 1998, Davis 1999). Dr Davis has continued to develop these ideas further linking into the mainstream literature concerned with Intellectual Capital, Learning Organisation and Learning Community Theories. (See Davis 2004).
His principle thesis is that co-operatives have an ownership structure and core values that gives them a better opportunity than share based businesses to apply modern management methods particularly in areas such as quality management, human resource management, intellectual capital management and in the learning organisation approach. He also claims that membership, as a key human resource for co-operatives, needs a much more professional approach based on learning community type models. He advocates a management approach which he has named Co-operative Social Capital Management (CSCM) in his latest book (Davis, 2004).
More controversially Dr Davis advocates a unitary culture with the executive manager and sometimes, depending on size, two or more of his top team as full board members. His dictum is that managers lead and boards govern in co-operatives. He qualifies this position with his insistance that only with a management which adopts the co-operative valued based approach advocated by Davis and Donaldson (Davis 95, Davis and Donaldson 98, and in Davis 1999 and 2004) will such a dictum be possible. He warns that demutualization and managerialism in co-operatives will not be prevented nor can the ICA Identity Statement ever be properly implemented without a co-operative value based management culture being at the heart of the modern large scale co-operative enterprise.
Fighting Poverty and Exploitation
Dr Davis in his book Labour and the Family (Davis, 2000) has developed an analytic framework in which he situates the domestic and money economies as inter connected parts of a single real economy. His thesis is that by expanding the value added in the domestic economy some workers in marginal employment can be more fruitfully employed to their enrichment and that of their family and the wider community. The main impact on the labour market would be to reduce the level of over supply amongst its lowest paid segments enabling trade unions and state agencies to be in a better position to regulate the minimum employement standards for those left in the labour market.
Dr Davis calls for a re-engagement with the domestic economy by co-operators and development specialists as well as by trade unionists. He returns to a re-valuation of the work of the English Labour Economist in his advocacy of a incremental capital accumulation approach that protects and develops the autnomy of the poor rather than a micro finance strategy based on privately owned banks. At the boundaries between the domestic economy and the low income families he sees a key role for community co-operatives and credit unions. Through the latter the mainstream large credit unions, who provide mainstream democratically owned and controlled financial services, can link middle class and the better off working class segments in solidarity with the poor.
Dr Davis sees a key role for trade unions as sponsors of worker co-operative alternatives to unemployment and sweat shops. In his book Labour and the Family he proposes a labour market based strategy linking trade union, co-operatives and employee share ownership in a single strategy to improve distributive justice and raise the standard of living of the poor.
Religion
Dr Davis is a keen advocate of interfaith dialogue. He took a course in Hindu intellectual traditions and studied Islam as part of his undergraduate life in the former School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex, where he read Politics and retains an interest in both faiths. He is married to a Buddhist.
He is a strong advocate of the importance of Catholic Social Doctrine for our contemporary situation both for engaing Catholic laity and for responding in a principleds way to the challenges of secularism the academy and of business and extremism in society. Dr Davis recognises a clear relationship between a robust civil society and a robust labour and co-operative movement. The acceptance that without a robust civil society we can never atttain a virtuous society leads him to call upon the Catholic Church to consider recognising more actively the vocation of management as particularly important for the co-operative and trade union sectors. He believes the Churches Social Doctrine to be of critical importance in providing a unifying basis in theory and in practice in an interfaith struggle against secularism and for the attainment of the virtuous society. (See Davis 97, Davis 2000a, and Davis 2005).
In a recent conference paper (2006) he called upon Catholic Business Schools to do more to introduce co-operative management and organisational studies into their curriculum. He suggests that as co-operatives play a key role in Catholic Social Doctrine they should not be ignored by Catholic Business Schools.
He argues that co-operatives are also critical to establishing a real pluralism that enables the market to be a genuine instrument for consumer and producer / worker choice. Co-operative vaklue based management should also be seen as being a normal part of the mainstrean business curiculum. (See Abstract after listing of Key Publications below).
Key Publications since 1995
Co-operative Management and Co-operative Purpose: Values, principles and Objectives for Co-operatives into the 21st Century, Discussion Papers in Management Studies, No. 95/1, Management Centre, University of Leicester, 1995 pp22.
Rochdale. A Re-evaluation of Co-operative History, Ch 15. Towards the Co-operative Commonwealth. Essays in the History of Co-operation, Ed. Bill Lancaster and Paddy Maguire, Co-operative College and the History Workshop Trust, Manchester,1996, pp109-123.
“Co-operative Management Development Opportunities” Review of International Co-operation, Geneva, Vol. 89, No1, 1996, pp95-99.
“Towards a value-based management culture for membership based organisations.” Journal of Co-operative Studies, Vol. 29. No 1, May 1996, pp 93-111.
Management Development for Co-operatives – A Review, Journal of Co-operative Studies, Vol.29,No. 3, January, 1997, pp53 to 68.
Management as a Vocation: Towards a People Centred Profession of Management Ch 6 in Instilling Values in the Educational Process Vol. 3 , of Business Education and Training: A Value Laden Process, University Press of America Inc., New York, 1997, pp67 to 88.
“Co-operative Identity and Co-operative Management”, Report of the Special Workshop on the ICA Co-operative Identity Statement (ICIS): From Theory to Practice, International Co-operative Alliance, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, New Delhi, Nov. 1997, pp 32 -39.
“Are Co-operative Managers Servants or Leaders ?” Report of the Special Workshop on the ICA Co-operative Identity Statement (ICIS): From Theory to Practice, International Co-operative Alliance, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, New Delhi, Nov. 1997, pp 39-42.
“Towards a Value -Based Management Culture for Membership -Based Organisations” Report of the Special Workshop on the ICA Co-operative Identity Statement (ICIS): From Theory to Practice, International Co-operative Alliance, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, New Delhi, Nov. 1997, pp 42-60.
Co-operative Management. A Philosophy for Business.
New Harmony Press, Cheltenham, May, 1998, 130pages (Co-authored with John Donaldson)
“Responding to Poverty. Communitarian solutions to rural and urban poverty through co-operative facilitation of primary associations based on households or families.” in Journal of Rural Co-operation, International Research Centre on Rural Co-operative Communities, Yad Tabenkin, Israel. 25th Anniversary Issue, 1998, pp 79 to 95.
Managing the Co-operative Difference. A survey of the application of modern management practices in the co-operative context. Co-operative Branch, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1999,
134 pp
Co-operative Management as a Catholic Vocation, in Business Education and Training: A Value Laden Process Vol. 4 Editor Samuel M. Natale, University Press of America, 2000a, pp157-180.
Labour and the Family. Communitarian solutions to marginalisation and poverty, University of Leicester and Harikopio University of Athens, 2000b.
“Reasserting the Co-operative Advantage. A Survey of Sixteen British Consumer Co-operative Societies”, Journal of Co-operative Studies, Vol. 33:2(No 99) August 2000, pp124 – 178. (co-author John Donaldson)
“The governance of co-operatives under competitive condition: issues, processes and culture”, Corporate Governance. The International Journal for Effective Board Performance, MCB University Press, Vol. 1 No1, 2001, pp28-39.
Human Resource Management in Co-operatives, ILO, Geneva, 2004.
Management Cooperativista. Una filosofia para los negocios, Grancia, Buenos Aries, 2005 co-authored with John Donaldson
“Co-operative Management. The Missing element for success in membership based organisations”, International Journal of Decision Ethics, Department of Educational Studies, Oxford, Global Scholarly Publications, Vol. 1.2 Spring, 2005, pp 155-206.
“Beyond Human Resource Management in Co-operatives” in Cross Cultural Management. An International Journal, Emerald Publishing Group, Vol. 13, No 1, 2006, pp 69- 95.
h.3 Abstract of recent conference paper
THE CO-OPERATIVE, CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT AND THE GOOD COMPANY.THE IMPORTANCE OF PLURALISM IN THE MARKET
By Dr Peter Davis p.davis@le.ac.uk
School of Management, University of Leicester
Abstract
The origins of co-operative social theory are to be found in a mix of Early Christian practice, later radical Christian ideas from the European Reformation, Enlightenment Philosophy, and pragmatic approaches to economic and social problems. Despite this possibly unpromising pedigree from a Catholic perspective it has been recognised that Co-operatives attempt to establish democracy, distributive justice and community. Co-operatives have, therefore, since the nineteenth century played a significant role in the practical expression of Catholic Social Theory.
The working definition of the co-operative business and its management proposed by the author as an ideal type shows a clear differentiation from other types of business. Yet co-operatives share in common with their rival’s economic goals for the provision of goods and services to customers within a market economy, whether regulated or unregulated. The paper argues that co-operative principles may be said to underpin the idea of the good company in Catholic Social Theory at least as completely as in other ideal types of business.
The paper discusses the underpinnings of co-operative social theory and the model of the ideal co-operative business in terms of the history of co-operative development and the mixed results that co-operatives have produced in practice. The impact of the state, managerial control, membership apathy and other environmental factors on the development and performance of co-operatives businesses are reflected upon.
The review of co-operative practice concludes that the lessons of the co-operative business are that it rarely meets the potential implied in its ideal type. Equally, co-operatives have demonstrated the capacity to effectively provide individuals with access to economic goods/services through an alternative framework to that of the share – based company. Many companies can be identified as “good” and many co-operatives equally may be identified as “bad”. Nevertheless, co-operatives as a set, it is argued, do have a genuinely differentiating competitive role relative to the share-based company in the marketplace that can benefit a wider range of stakeholders. Co-operatives create a pluralism that assists the efficient working of the market.
The paper concludes that it is as much this pluralism that co-operatives can bring to the market as their particular aims, ownership and governance structure that underpins their claim to social and economic significance. The challenge is not in making out the case but to persuade Catholic Business Schools to act upon it. Catholic students studying management and business have a right to be appraised of the Co-operative business as a realistic and significant organisational form in which to serve.
Key words
Business Models, Catholic Social Theory, Co-operative Identity, Purpose and Values, Market Economy, Pluralism (1).
The link to this and other papers delivered at this conference
Monthly Management Muses
The Co-operative Natural Advantage The Interlake Credit Union, Manitoba.
I am pleased to report some recent research evidence that supports two propositions that Davis and Donaldson have been pointing to for the last decade or more. Namely; a) the critical role of a co-operative value led management culture in promoting or the absence of such in underming the co-operative identity co-operative, and b) the natural advantage the co-operative business model presnts for the development of locally based competencies as part of its competitive advantage and strategic positioning. For more see Brett Fairbairns research report in winter spring edition of Developments 2006-07. See our Links Page under Academic Institutions for the Centre for Co-operative Studies, University of Saskatchewan web-site adress.
A Dictionary of Alternatives. Utopianism and Organization
Marx and Engels sort to side line the early work of the English Labour Economists and Owenite and other early co-operators like William King by describing their work as Utopian. Well it turns out that thier vague idea as to how revolutionary seizure of the stae would lead to communist society was the real utopianism. This new work helps to reinstate the practicality of many the organisational forms and those writers who promoted them which may be described as alternatives to the standard joint stock corporate model of doing business. All the credit goes to Editors Martin Parker , Valerie Fournier ( both Leicester University) and Patrick Reedy (University of Newcastle -upon – Tyne) and ZED Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84277-33-8 for publishing the work. I must disclose a personal interest here as I wrote the entry on John Francis Bray. I am grateful to the editors for giving me the opportunity to remind practioners, readers and researchers of alternative organisations of one of the most orginal thinkers from the early co-operative movement. His ideas on incremental capital accumulation, employee purchase of corporate assets and co-operative ownership and production have their legacy in todays Co-operatives, Credit Unions and other Micro Finance organisations as well as in the Employee Buyout Movement.
Co-operatives are well represented in the Dictionary and I am pleased to note an entry for the English Scott Bader Commonwealth and the Basque Mondragon Co-operative to be among them. Both these successful and long lived co-operatives were insired by the Christian convictions of their founders. The wider link between religion and alternative organisations is also well established in this Dictionary.
This work is both a serious work of reference and the empirical evidence that there are alternatives to the capitalist mode of ownership and business and that they work. This is an important book for people interested in the past but looking to the future for inspiration about how to respond practicaly, immediately and locally to the global challenges of the 21st Century.
Co-operative Governance and Democracy – the UK Expereince!
I read with incredulity the report in the UK National Federation of Progressive Co-operators ‘The Porgressive Co-operator’ Vol.3 Issue 6 p6 that the Leeds Consumer Co-operative lay Directors have awarded themselves a payout of £37,000 each for loss of office as a result of their recommendation of a merger with a another Society, whilst avoiding putting the merger to a psotal ballot of the members. Well if this report is true I wonder just what has happened to voluntarism, service, not to mention equity and democracy. We all know that for years local elected boards blocked mergers right across the 300 plus original consumer societies that used to exist in the UK. This was one important factor leading to the movements inabliity to respond to the private sector multiples like Tesco who challenged and overtook the British Consumer Co-operatives from the 1960s onwards. Perhaps such payments would have helped spped up rationalisation and consolidation in the British Movement had they been ethically acceptable in the past. Call me old fashioned if you like but I cannot see why elected lay directors should recieve such high payouts compared to staff statutory redundancy payments?
“h4内容
请看以下各标题
活动
主要构想及细项
合作事业的管理及机构的发展
对抗贪穷及剥削
宗教
主要出版
近期议会文章撮要
管理页(将由二○○七年五月一日开始)
每月定时发表从事合作事业及以人为本机构管理人员所面对的各种问题。请参阅李斯特大学管理学院以人为本机构研究所的有关连结。
h4.活动
于二○○二年彼得戴维斯博士 (Dr Peter Davis) 获委为Rabobank合作农耕企业研究所的会员。于二○○三年彼得戴维斯博士亦获委为联合国一个十六人督导委员会的成员主一。于二○○六年的非洲首个合作事业大学启用典礼上，彼得戴维斯博士在非洲合作事业管理及发展方面的贡献，被正式获得肯定。
彼得戴维斯博士为合作事业国际定期杂志的创刊编辑，并为全球合作运动论坛的知名人物。他于储蓄互助社国际议事会、亚洲储蓄互助社联盟会、加拿大合作社协会、日本消费合作社总会与及由南非至埃塞俄比亚的非洲官方及联邦合作社团体的许多个论坛上，多次进行演说及主持工作坊。
他曾两任英国合作事业研究社 (UK Society for Co-operative Studies) 及共有工业财务有限公司 (Industrial Common Ownership Finance Ltd) 的主席及李斯特城郡合作事业发展机构的创社司库。
身为USDAW的前工贸督察及工业审裁处督察，彼得戴维斯博士成功代表工人在歧视、同工同酬、最低工资、无理迫害、无理解雇、削减劳工等个案上寻找公义。他为推动亚洲工人组织的先驱者，于一九七○年他在首次联合王国集体谈判方面成功取得协议，并将事迹翻译为外国语言，而该等事迹已被正式收纳于USDAW的历史档案中。
他与约翰当奴逊于一九九八年创立新和谐印刷社 (New Harmony Press)。
h4.主要构想
合作事业的管理及机构的发展
他针对合作社管理人员的需要，创立管理及发展的遥距课程，并与约翰当奴逊共同发展他两定义为以合作价值为基础管理的一套独特合作事业管理原则及方法 (详见Davis, 1995, Davis and Donaldson 1998, Davis 1999)。在连同其它有关智识资本、学习型组织、学习型社区等主流文学的理论上，戴维斯博士继续发展该等构想。
他的主要论点为合作事业存有集体拥有的结构及核心价值，此特质令合作事业比起股份形式的生意，拥有较佳的机会采用现代化管理方法，尤其在品质管理、人力资源管理、智识资本管理及学习型组织研习方法等方面。他声称，作为合作事业主要人力资源的社员，需要在学习型社区的多个基础模式上，拥有更多专业管理手法。他所提倡的管理手法，在其最近的著作中称为合作事业社会资本管理 (CSCM) (Davis, 2004)。
戴维斯博士提倡共同与行政管理人员建立单一文化，并需因应组纤规模的大小而由优秀队伍中委任两个或以上的优秀人员，作为全职董事会成员，上述乃被认为较富争议性的理论。戴维斯博士认为，行政管理人员应负责领导合作社发展，而董事会则负责管治工作，此乃他的立论。他的立论只限于那些采纳由戴维斯及当奴逊共同倡议而以合作事业价值为基础的管理方法，才能使立论得以实现。(Davis 95, Davis and Donaldson 98, and in Davis 1999 and 2004)。他警告谓，合作社推行公司化改制 (demutualization) 及管理主义 (managerialism) 将无可避免，而现今较大规模的合作社企业，若其欠缺以合作事业价值为基础的管理文化为核心的话，国际合作事业联盟所订定的身份声明 (ICA Identity Statement) 亦永远能恰当地推行。
对抗贪穷及剥削
戴维斯博士在他的著作劳工阶级与家庭 (Labour and the Family) (Davis, 2000) 一书中已发展出一个可供分析用的框架，他在框架内确立，本土经济及金钱经济体系，与单一实质经济体系相互连系。他的论点认为，申延本土经济增值，可使一些开工不足的工人，能享有较具成果的雇用模式，从而使其家庭及整个社区都能受惠。而在整个劳工市场方面带来的影响，包括减少低收入阶层供过于求的情况，使工会组织及国家机构能拥有较佳地位，为未能受惠于劳工市场的工人，就各项最低的雇用条件和标准进行监察。
戴维斯博士呼吁合作事业从业员、发展专家及工会组织领袖重新投入参与本土经济，他亦就英国劳工经济员 (English Labour Economists) 的工作进行重估，倡议增加资本储备方法，用以保障及发展穷人的自助能力，取代以私人银行作为基础的小额信贷 (micro finance) 发展策略。在本土经济及低收入家庭两者的界限中，他看出社区合作社及储蓄互助社所能扮演的主要角色，透过后者，即以民主方式拥有及监控的大规模储蓄互助社所提供的主流理财服务，可将中产阶级、较高收入工人阶级及贫穷人士融为一体。
戴维斯博士看出，工会可扮演主要角色，支持及赞助以工人合作社替代失业及压榨工人的工厂。在其著作劳工阶级与家庭 (Labour and the Family) 一书中，戴维斯博士建议，那些以劳工市场为基础的策略，可与工会组织、合作社及由工人共同拥有的组织等的策略相互结合，成为单一策略，以改善公平分配的情况，提高贫穷人士的生活水平。
宗教
戴维斯博士为宗教多元化对话 (interfaith dialogue) 的积极推祟者，他修毕一个有关印度教传统通识课程，並完成学习伊斯兰教义，作为他在前塞蕯斯大学非洲及亚洲研习学院 (former School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex) 学士生生涯的部份，他在该学院学习政治及对该两个信仰仍然保留兴趣。他现与一名佛教徒共谐连理。
戴维斯博士强烈提倡天主教奉行的社会定律 (Catholic Social Doctrine) 的重要性，在现行情况下，尤其适用于信奉天主教的信徒、在社会上以特定原则来应付世俗主义带来挑战的人士、从事学术及商业的人士与及极端主义者。戴维斯博士认为，一个健康的平民社会，与劳工及合作社运动存有清的关系，缺乏一个健康的平民社会，我们永远不能达成一个品德高尚的社会。这理念导致他前往要求天主教教会考虑在合作事业及工会组织的管理工作应被视为特别重要的事宜上，积极作出较多肯定。他相信天主教奉行的社会定律，在宗教多元化与世俗主义的对抗中，就提供一个统一的理论及实践基础与及如何建立一个品德高尚的社会等各方面，均具有关键的重要性。(详见 Davis 97, Davis 2000a, and Davis 2005).在近期的一份会议文章内 (2006) ，他要求所有天主教商业学院，将合作事业的管理及组织研究等课题，在课程内作出更多的介绍工作，他建议，由于合作社在天主教奉行的社会定律方面扮演重要角式，因此不应该受到天主教商业学院的忽视。
他的论点认为，合作社在建立一个真正多元化主义而使市场能够成为消费者、生产者及工人真正的选择工具的事情上，极具关键作用。而以合作事业价值为基础的管理方法，亦应被视为主流商业课程的正常部份。(详见下列主要著作一覧)。
h4.自1995年始的主要著作
著作现未有中文文本请参阅上述英文原著
h.3近期会议文章撮要
全文没有中文文本
合作事业、天主教的社会构想及质优机构
市场多元化主义的重要性
由英国李斯特大学管理学院
彼得戴维斯博士撰写
电邮地址p.davis@le.ac.uk
被视为理想模式的合作事业与及其管理方法，从作者建议的工作释义中，与其它类型的商业模式比较，显示出一个清晰的区别。然而合作社与其竞争对手，在一个同样的市场经济环境中，无论其被受监控与否，在向雇客提供货品及服务时，均可共同分享经济成果。该文章论点认为，在天主教奉行的社会定律方面而言，合作事业原则或许被认为不能够加固质优机构的营运意念，但最少能对其他理想的商业模式带来正面的影响。
该文章亦讨论有关加固合作事业的社会理论的因素，及在合作事业发展历史与合作社生产实务方面的共同成果基础上，讨论合作事业的理想营运模式。国家政策的阻碍，管理层监控程度，社员的冷漠态度及其它环境因素所做成的种种影响，全都可由合作社业务的发展及表现反映出来。
合作事业的实践检讨书结论认为，从合作社业务所学习的课题，很少能达至理想模式内所忍藏的潜能。合作社已表现其卓越能力，同样透过好像股份制公司架构一样，有效向社员提供经济产品或服务。很多公司被认为「好」，而很多合作社在同样情况下则被视为「劣」。无论如何，作者的论点认为，合作社作为群体，与股份制公司比较，在市场上确实扮演不同的竞争角色，亦同时对更广泛界别的持份者带来裨益。
该文章结论认为，合作社为市场带来丰富的多元化主义，因其特有的目标、共同拥有的特征、管治架构等因素，可加固合作社的存在价值。真正的挑战并非在于将合作事业的课题带出讨论，而是说服天主教商业学院，将其付诸实行。研习管理及商业学的天主教学生，应该拥有权利，就参与研习具有现实及特殊意义的机构模式的合作社业务而获得正面评价。
关键词汇
商业模式、天主教奉行的社会定律、合作事业身份、目的及价值、市场经济、多元化主义
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