This book represents an idea that has been put into practice and a gamble that has paid off. It is the result of an exchange of ideas that took place between Professor Monni and me when I was President of the Italian Co-operative Alliance and it uses the ‘traditional’ structure of a dictionary to present a series of ‘keywords’, with the aim of helping us to gain a greater understanding of co-operative enterprises. It has two aims: one is to present co-operation to a wide audience by clearly explaining its main characteristics and the other is to provide those who are already familiar with and interested in co-operation with new ways of interpreting and understanding a phenomenon that over a period of 170 years has spread to numerous different countries and fields.
In order to meet these aims, academics from various countries, representatives of international institutions, and members of the co-operative world have come together as a collective authorship. The array of themes explored reveals the very distinctive nature of the co-operative, leading us through the co-operative business model, its social and economic impact, its organizational structure, and its system of values. If we glance through the entries that represent co-operative enterprises – ranging from work and participation to safety and well-being, workers’ buyouts, control and governance, rural development and co-operative quality – we are con- fronted with an expressive and complex system whose key principle is yet refreshingly simple: that people play a central role.
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