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
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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?
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????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? (??Davis, 1995, Davis and Donaldson 1998, Davis 1999)????????????????????????????????????????????????
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(Davis 95, Davis and Donaldson 98, and in Davis 1999 and 2004)???????????????? (demutualization) ????? (managerialism) ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? (ICA Identity Statement) ???????????
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??????????????????????????????????????????????? (English Labour Economists) ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? (micro finance) ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
????????????????????????????????????????????????????? (Labour and the Family) ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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