Co-operative democracy versus professional managerial bureaucracy: A case study of a housing co-operative facing external management

TitleCo-operative democracy versus professional managerial bureaucracy: A case study of a housing co-operative facing external management
Publication TypeThesis
Year of Publication1998
AuthorsWack JL
AdvisorSacouman J
Academic DepartmentSociology
DegreeMaster of Arts M.A.
Number of Pages116
UniversityAcadia University (Canada)
CityWolfville, NS
Abstract

Historically, co-operatives were established to combat the serious social, economic, and political inequalities found in industrial societies, that is, those based on the capitalist system. Today is no different. Co-operatives are an organizational form that can potentially provide the structural bases for highly democratic and empowering relations to occur for the members who co-operate within them depending on their orientation toward collectivism or bureaucracy.Evangeline Courts Housing Co-operative Ltd. was designed to provide quality, affordable housing for low income families. It was initially started by a group of sole parent women with common life circumstances, experiences, and needs. By working together with a local resource group and facilitators trained in collectivist organization, the women were able to develop a set of common values and goals and a democratic form of organization to achieve them. This form lasted for a few years and then their struggles ensued as the collectivist form of organization began to change to a bureaucratic form which included being managed by professional property management groups. This process defied their goals of creating an empowering democratic community and they fought it tooth and nail.Their story is about the struggle to maintain a democratic organizational form amidst the highly bureaucratic dominant capitalist relations found in society. As the world struggles with large scale issues of democracy, members of this housing co-operative are fighting to define and entrench it within their organization. Understanding this struggle against professional managerial bureaucracy in favour of co-operative democracy aptly illuminates the intricacies of democratic processes required for collective transformative change to occur.

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