Co-operatives, Work, and the Digital Economy: A Knowledge Synthesis Report
This report surveys literature on co-operative approaches to improving work and livelihoods in the digital economy. We begin by introducing the co-operative model and the claim that co-operatives—democratically owned and governed businesses—are a promising tool to counter a range of problems of work in digital capitalism, from worker disempowerment to weak social protections. We go on to discuss concepts updating co-operative theory and practice for the digital age, including platform cooperativism, open cooperativism, and distributed co-operative organizations. Next, we outline some of the ways the co-operative form has been adopted by and for different groups of workers, including self-employed workers, location-based platform workers in the on-demand economy, technologists and communication professionals, and data subjects.
While the reviewed literature presents evidence of co-ops’ potential to improve working conditions and mitigate power asymmetries in the digital economy, the report also summarizes discussions of the challenges co-ops face, such as access to capital, public awareness of co-ops, and business development support. We next explore perspectives on the supporting infrastructure necessary to overcome these challenges and expand worker co-ops’ presence in the digital economy, including enabling legislation and policy; alternative financing models; technical assistance for co-op business development; co-operation among co-operatives, particularly via the formation of federations for sharing technology; and increased awareness of the co-op model at strategic sites of learning and new business formation.
Returning to the two defining structural features of co-operatives, we go on to identify some examples of what democratic ownership and collective governance look like in practice in the digital field. We note, for instance, a co-operative shaping-of-technology dynamic, where co-op members have a say in the design of the technologies that organize their work. Despite the promise of co-ops in digital economy contexts, the literature cautions against viewing them as a panacea: they remain entangled with the very economic paradigms, systems of social exclusion, and cultures of work that many co-ops seek to transform. The report thus acknowledges that individual co-ops are not, by themselves, a sufficient response to problems of work and inequality in the digital economy, with several authors positioning co-operatives as one among a diversity of worker-centered organizations and strategies necessary to improve work and livelihoods in the digital economy. We conclude with suggestions for future research and policy recommendations that flow from the reviewed literature.
Image credit: Goce Ilievski (Stocksy United)
