Emerging Cooperative Research Issues: Early Careers Challenges

In the last quarter of a century, the cooperative movement attracted more members than it did in its known history. This growth in acceptance means improved integration of cooperatives into socio-economic development policies at all tiers of policy making and execution. Notwithstanding this impressive trend, there are associated challenges on multiple fronts. Principal among these challenges is the increased diversity of member institutions and their members, hence the emergence of associated problems such as communication issues, slower decision making, political interferences, competition with capitalist or joint stock businesses, conflict of interest in the adoption of either tradition or emerging models etc.

The foregoing should ordinarily create fertile grounds for the research community. However, the reality is to the contrary. Researches on cooperatives are fraught in among others, contending with the primary challenges of situating appropriate disciplines and schools of thought. For example, cooperatives may be researched from the primary disciplines of economics, sociology, geography, political science, history, law, business administration, and finance to mention a few. Furthermore, schools of thoughts such as classical, Marxian, Keynesian, positivist, pure theory, functional, realist, utilitarian, historical, sociological, contingency, and contemporary are some of the guiding philosophies from which cooperative research works may be initiated. While these may not prove complex to established scholars, they place enormous difficulties on the path of early career cooperative researchers.

We will host a 90 minutes webinar on November 3rd, 2022 from 09:00 am EST with Prof. Kamau Ngamau (Vice Chancellor, The Co-operative University of Kenya), Prof. Rory Ridley (Professor Emeritus, Sheffield Hallam University) and Dr. Terence Muzorewa (Midland State University). The webinar will be moderated by Timothy Bisakaya (Coordinator YSI Coop WG ) and Ajibola Akanji (Leed City University, Ibadan Nigeria).