The best cooperative tool: OD
Organizational Development is a planned, systematic approach to improving organizational effectiveness – one that supports strategy, people and processes. To achieve the desired goals of high performance and competitive advantage, organizations are often in the midst of significant change. Often inspirational vision for the organization gets created by a few and then thrust upon the many. Too often, this results in these change initiatives ending in a successful change of procedures and structures, but less sustainable change in ways of working, culture and effectiveness. Organizational development is a specific perspective and area of expertise which speaks to this challenge. In the context of cooperative societies, cooperative governance is a tool of OD.
Cooperative governance is a system in which cooperatives are directed, controlled and fully managed. The cooperative governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the cooperatives, such as, the board members, managers, employees, share members and other stakeholders, and brings out the rules and procedures for making decisions on cooperative affairs. By doing this, it also provides the structure through which the cooperatives' objectives are set, and are applied the means of achieving those objectives. It is the process through which any organization can maintain its vision, mission, goal and objectives in a transparent way. Governance is the practice of good conduct by rule or laws in order to achieve organizational objectives. Cooperative governance leads to the rules, the tools and the concrete procedures through which cooperatives are managed. Cooperative governance has eight major characteristics. They are participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follow the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in the society are heard in decision making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of the society. The governance must be consistent with the values, the principles and the mission of the cooperatives, in order to allow for their correct implementation.
Cooperatives are organized by the group of people which are democratically controlled, managed and owned to serve the members and produce benefits for them. Therefore cooperative governance is concerned with ensuring cooperative relevance and performance by connecting members, their elected representatives, management and employees to the policy, strategy and decision making processes.
The cooperative movement aims to mobilize financial and other resources of the members, ensuring that they are utilized to the best advantage of the members, providing easy credit to members, providing support for uplifting from poverty, backwardness and exploitation. Cooperatives are being considered as the most reliable and effective organization in creating and maximizing the wealth and contributing to poverty alleviation. The cooperatives are the most practical way of pulling resources together and accessing credit easily among entrepreneur poor group. The main objective of a cooperative is to offer high-quality services to the members to fulfill their needs and aspirations to make them able to generate additional income and social comforts for themselves. The principles, core values and norms of cooperative governance in the cooperatives can be applied as mentioned below:
· Share Member: The Key Person
Members in the cooperatives are shareholders i.e. owner. They should have the feeling of ownership. Each and every member is equal in all aspects. They have the role as supervisory body in ensuring that their organizations are well managed. They must be careful and well known about the objectives and functions of their cooperatives so that they can effectively elect the representatives who are the visionary persons, who can apply organizational development tools, will be accountable and responsible for the efficient and effective governance of the cooperatives so as to achieve cooperative objectives, prosperity and sustainability.
· Executive committee: The Visionary board
The role of Executive committee is to lead the cooperative by effective ways which exercises leadership, enterprise, integrity and judgment in directing the cooperatives and which acts in the best interest of the cooperatives in a transparent, accountable and responsible manner.
· Planning and Strategies: Guideline for TQM
Executive Committee should formulate periodic plan, strategic plan and continuously review and determine the goals, strategies and shape the values of their cooperatives and rework out appropriate strategies to achieve the goals. There are various methods for planning and making strategies but committee must remember the cooperative norms while choosing the method that gives guideline for total quality management.
· Information Sharing System
There should be well defined formal communication sharing system in cooperatives and all related information regarding the cooperatives should be communicated in a timely manner to all stakeholders. There should be two ways communication system among members and the managerial body regularly.
· Orientation, Training and Career Development Activities
An effective orientation program for new committee members and training and career development programs should be continuously organized in order to provide executive members with new and emerging skills in their areas and for good cooperative governance. Such type of orientation, skill based training, professional training for members and employees as well.
· Procedure of Board Meetings
To maintain good governance, the board members should devote their time and resource to their cooperatives by meeting as regularly as per the needs of the cooperative, but at least once every month. There must be full discussion in economic agenda at first in every meeting, then after newly membership, loaning and so on. Decision should be taken by full or two-third members' acceptance.
· Effective Reporting System
The cooperatives should ensure that financial reports follow the accounting standards and there should be effective reporting system of all operational reports to the various supervisory bodies and various stakeholders.
· Internal Control System
There should be Auditory, account supervisory committee for internal control system that monitors its collective performance, the performance of managerial bodies. This should be done
through at least quarterly evaluation and providing suggestions to the executive committee.
· Risk Management System
There should establish a process of identifying, analyzing and managing risks monthly. There should be managed proper loan risk provision fund, analyzing PEARLS monthly.
· Cooperative Social Responsibilities
There should be cooperative social responsibilities to establish and sustain in the community.
· Code of conduct, Policies and procedure for the Best Practice
There should be approval and implementation of written codes of conduct, various policies and procedure for the best practice of cooperative governance. Every decision must be done indicating the article, schedules of the written and approved laws, rules, policies and procedures.
After everything else, cooperatives are organized by a group of people and are democratically controlled to serve their members and generate benefits for them. Therefore cooperative governance is concerned with ensuring cooperative relevance and performance by connecting members, their elected representatives, management and employees to the policy, strategy and decision making processes. Good governance can be maintained by applying honestly the prevailing laws and respecting the spirit behind these prevailing laws.
