WP 49 | 13 Cooperative economy: an innovative approach to sustainability
An initial review of the International Year of Cooperatives shows how plural, widespread and long-lived the forms of the cooperative economy are. Hence the particular resilience and breadth of use of this form of enterprise, which, however, is matched by a public perception that tends to view it as marginal or transitory. The current discussion that the crisis has provoked around the limits of financial capitalism is challenging this minority status of the cooperative economy. The text deals with two opposing economic visions: the financial one in which only the growth of capital matters, and the cooperative one in which the search for a balance between multiple dimensions, including social and environmental ones, matters instead.
The paper is available also in Spanish: Economía cooperativa: un enfoque innovador para la sostenibilidad
