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The International Cooperative Alliance’s official statement of cooperative identity, values, and seven principles, including democratic member control and member economic participation.
Worker co-op governance starts with the cooperative identity: member control, shared economic participation, autonomy, education, and accountability to community.
Giving new members and founders a shared vocabulary for what makes a cooperative different from a conventional company.
Heirloom Library entries are summaries and wayfinding notes. The original source is the best place to read the full resource.
Open original resourceRelated
Sociocracy For All
A Sociocracy For All article focused on objections: what they are, why they matter, and how they can improve proposals rather than stop decisions.
International Cooperative Alliance
An ICA governance paper on how cooperatives can balance democratic principles, flexibility, resilience, and complexity.
School for Democratic Management
A DAWI program and resource hub focused on practical democratic management tools, assessments, activities, and training.
This is the baseline reference for cooperative governance. It is not worker-co-op-specific, but it defines the principles that most worker cooperative governance systems are built around. For a worker co-op library, this resource is useful as the anchor for explaining why democratic control, member education, and member economic participation are not optional add-ons. They are part of the model.