Much of the discussion on open source's relevance to cooperatives has focused on open, permissive licenses that represent a 'digital commons' (possibly at risk of appropriation). But debate over licensing misses an essential and unique quality of open source: its democratic toolset which is much more sophisticated than resolutions and Annual General Meetings.
Unicorn Grocery is a thriving worker-owned, values-driven grocery co-op using sociocracy for its governance in Chorlton, Manchester, UK. They consist of 71 members who all work within the cooperative and are also the directors of the business.
One the most important skills that a facilitator can develop is their intuition—the sense of what to do in a given situation, even when the rational pathway to that choice is obscure.
Professor Imanol Basterretxea discusses some of the governance failures that helped lead to the collapse of the Mondragon cooperative Fagor Electrodoméstico.
Today I want to examine a dynamic about which people frequently get confused—especially when they're upset: the difference between having concerns and the way they're expressed.
