The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present

The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present, Edited by Patrizia Battilani and Harm G. Schrter, is reviewed. In The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present, economic historians Patrizia Battilani and Harm G. Schrter have assembled an international cohort of scholars to enhance debates over business's political, ethical, and social function by broadening our consideration of what exactly constitutes business itself. A primary flaw in the neoliberal market logic articulated by the MBA students in response to the ethics pledge is the assumption that business firms need serve shareholders at all. The persistence of cooperative enterprises collectively owned and managed firms that retain a social orientation while still making money for the producers, consumers, or workers that control them provide a clear counterexample. Yet, Battilani and Schrter contend, business historians and economists have not sufficiently integrated the story of co-ops into their assessments of global capitalism, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. The nine chapters of this edited volume contend, as the editors claim, that yes, co-ops matter to business's history as well as its future (p. 1). Thus, in hopes of inspiring a new research agenda for business historians, they survey the wide-ranging varieties of experiences, strategies, typologies, and models of cooperative enterprise around the world.