A first of its kind in Ontario, the Co-operative Management Certificate Program will be inaugurated at York on Dec. 3. The program is an initiative of York’s Business & Society Program (BUSO) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Nonprofit Management & Leadership Program in York’s Schulich School of Business, in partnership with the Ontario Co-operative Association.
Designed for leaders in the cooperative sector, the Co-operative Management Certificate Program focuses on both a broad understanding of the field as well as innovative strategies for addressing contemporary issues in cooperative management. Issues covered range from the legislative context of cooperatives in Ontario to the impacts of globalization; from the governance, membership and management of co-ops to developing and financing a wide range of cooperatives.
Development of the program has involved wide consultation with the cooperative sector in Ontario. Key actors in initiating the program include Denyse Guy, executive director of the Ontario Co-operative Association, York Professor Brenda Gainer (PhD ’92), director of the Nonprofit Management & Leadership Program at Schulich, and BUSO Professors J.J. McMurtry and Darryl Reed.
As part of the festivities, BUSO has organized a double book launch as well as a panel discussion on Cooperatives in a Changing Economy, featuring York sociology Professor Emeritus Jack Craig, Professor Jack Quarter from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Sally Miller, coordinator of the West End Food Co-op and author of Edible Action: Food Activism & Alternative Economics (Fernwood Publishing, 2008). The event will take place on Thursday, Dec. 3, from 3pm to 4:30pm, in the fifth floor conference room of the York Research Tower on York’s Keele campus. Everyone is welcome.
The first book, Living Economics: Canadian Perspectives on the Social Economy, Co-operatives and Community Economic Development (Emond Montgomery Publications, 2009), is edited by McMurtry, coordinator of BUSO. The second, Co-operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Co-operation Across Borders (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), is co-edited by Reed and McMurtry.
In Living Economics, the diverse understandings and experiences of the social economy within a Canadian context are discussed. The book brings together in one text authors from the French, English and First Nations communities, as well as practitioners and academics working in the field. The goal of Living Economics is to argue that from these diverse experiences and understandings a definition of the social economy can emerge which can guide policy and practice in this field in the future.
In Co-operatives in a Global Economy, contributors look at how, in their efforts to internationalize in an emerging global economy, cooperatives not only face a variety of problems that are common to all firms, but encounter specific challenges due to their particular value commitments, forms of incorporation and organizational structures. This collection examines the challenges cooperatives face in our increasingly global economy and the debates surrounding them.
For more information, visit the BUSO Web site.