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This policy brief calls for co-operative industry associations to implement policies that encourage co-operatives to embrace the SDGs in a way that reflects the co-operative difference. In particular, this brief explores why it is important for co-operatives to measure and report on the SDGs and to link the SDGs to the seven principles of co-operatives. We argue that reporting on the SDGs in the context of the seven principles enables co-operatives to illustrate their co-operative difference from investor-owned businesses (IOB) who are increasingly reporting on SDG performance. We identify key recommendations that are critical in facilitating co-operatives’ adoption of the SDGs and in reporting their performance relative to the SDGs and the seven principles.

After reading and analysing the case study, the students would be able to understand the various challenges in terms of credit expansion for a rural co-operative bank, discuss the role of an apex co-operative bank within the three-tier credit structure, understand the co-operative banks’ product offerings in the agribusiness space and understand the various styles of leadership and change management models within a rural bank.

This case study exemplified the enabling role played by a co-operative credit institution, Andhra Pradesh State Co-Operative Bank (APCOB). It discussed the issues and challenges APCOB faced in mainstreaming an unconventional lending process through its lower tiers. Although the three-tier credit structure played a significant role in the disbursal of short-term loan to farmers, the managing director strongly felt the need to reach out to farmer institutions like farmer producers organization through suitable product offering and right processes.

This case study could serve as an introduction to rural credit co-operatives in MBA courses such as bank management, agricultural finance and rural credit and organizational behaviour. The case study could also be administered as a part of training programmes for state co-operative banks, district central co-operative banks and urban co-operative bank that are involved in planning and execution of development strategies in the area of co-operative banking and agribusiness development.

Teaching notes are available for educators only

CSS: 1: Accounting and Finance.

The paper traces the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s. It proposes that employee ownership is a function of macro-level contexts and micro-level decisions, with the latter framed and guided by the former. The macro context comprises the regulatory framework and the provision of incentives to adopt employee ownership. The paper shows how the evolution of these has led to a steep increase in employee ownership in the last eight years.

The paper draws on several sources of empirical data to chart the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s and to identify the current features of employee ownership. Two firm-level surveys conducted in 2015 and 2020/21 are supplemented by qualitative case study data collected in the early 1990s. An annual census of all employee-owned firms facilitates a comprehensive overview of the current state of UK employee ownership.

It is found that there has been a steep increase in the number of UK employee-owned firms since 2014 after several decades of uneven growth. This is attributed to the introduction of new incentives and to refinements of the regulatory framework. Over the period, there has been a shift from hybrid employee ownership, combining direct and indirect forms, to indirect ownership associated with the employee ownership trust model.

The paper provides an original history of employee ownership in the UK using rich and unique data, along with the most comprehensive picture of current employee ownership to date.

Providing public healthcare to people is a major challenge for governments. In this sector, public-funded systems are grossly inadequate in India, and excessive commercialization and exploitation by the private sector are a stark reality. The cooperative healthcare model is emerging as an alternate system in Kerala with its strong service objective to challenge the woes of private healthcare. The cooperative hospitals in the state worked round the clock to serve the poor and needy during the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has also badly exposed the weakness of our healthcare system in the wake of challenges posed by an increase in demand for health services, especially in rural areas. The resultant rise in the cost of treatment has put severe strains on the people at a time when even their day to day jobs were in peril. India has a strong cooperative movement and world-class institutions to serve as models in each sector. The Thrikkakara Municipal Co-operative Hospital, located at Cochin in the Kerala State of India on which this case study is written was established by the Hospital Society Ltd. in 1999, as a project under the People’s Planning Programme of the Government. Today, it has grown into a medium-sized healthcare establishment with the prime objective ‘Modern healthcare to all at affordable costs’ and cater to an average of 700 outpatients a day. This case study reveals the inception, development over years, facilities available, operations, management, public interface, and outlook for the hospital to become a modern healthcare institution to serve the people still better.

The purpose of this paper is to present an up-to-date survey on the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique with co-operative strategy, a fast-evolving fifth-generation (5 G) technology. NOMA is used for serving many mobile users, both in power and code domains. This paper considers the power-domain NOMA, which is now discussed as NOMA.

The first part of the paper discusses NOMA-based cooperative relay systems using different relay strategies over different channel models. In various research works, the analytical expressions of many performance metrics were derived, measured and simulated for better performance of the NOMA systems. In the second part, a brief introduction to diversity techniques is discussed. The multiple input and multiple output system merged with cooperative NOMA technology, and its future challenges were also presented in this part. In the third part, the paper surveys some new conceptions such as cognitive radio, index modulation multiple access, space-shift keying and reconfigurable intelligent surface that can be combined with NOMA systems for better performance.

The paper presents a brief survey of diverse research projects being carried out in the field of NOMA. The paper also surveyed two different relaying strategies that were implemented in cooperative NOMA over different channels and compared several performance parameters that were evaluated and derived in these implementations.

The paper provides a scope for recognizable future work and presents a brief idea of the new techniques that can be united with NOMA for better performance in wireless systems.

Human evolution has witnessed the highest level of metamorphism overages. COVID-19 alarmed us when we were unceasingly running toward monetary benefits and money, the significance of health. That initiated the thought process of improvising the health and healthcare infrastructure, leading to the birth of the health cooperative as a reform. During the state of COVID services, operations of the hospital were unreachable due to the unavailability of doctors, facilities, hiked charges, and lack of insurance coverage made people disbelieve in the system. Many social activists propose the idea of healthcare cooperatives to foster healthcare needs. The study guides us to understand the roles of healthcare cooperatives like the establishment of service facilities, modernisation of existing facilities, expansion to various topographical locations, and healthcare education to the general public, repair, and renovate the instrumentation in the medical field. The study also finds the ways and means of self-sustainability of health cooperatives with dependency on government financial support during the initial take-off. The benefits of cooperatives contributing to the NDHM and supporting the development of healthcare infrastructure in rural areas. The study enables us to find the factors that healthcare cooperatives need to consider for providing the right benefit to the citizens and factors for the self-sustained and self-resilient mode of seamless operation. The study has two different data collecting instruments, one to collect the data from the public and other from healthcare professionals. The result of the study reveals the mechanisms through which healthcare cooperatives can provide well-structured healthcare support to the nation.

According to Global Healthcare Security Index 2021, India ranked 66 out of 195 countries, indicating the need and scope for improvement. The Cooperative healthcare system which has been rendering exemplary services is yet to gain visible recognition in India. Given the need for upgrading the health infrastructure in India and providing more affordable health services to the country’s growing population, it would help appreciate the large role that cooperative healthcare can play along with others. This study explores the structure, conduct, and performance of healthcare co-operatives in India, the factors contributing to their success and failure, and the challenges they face. The Health Cooperatives have a strong presence in Kerala and Karnataka and are also coming up in other parts of the country. However, a detailed database of them for public awareness is very limited. The cooperative hospitals can meet the basic requirements of curative treatment in rural and poorly-endowed urban areas. The democratic way in which they function makes them a destination for a financially weaker section. They must retain this feature. The study covers two successful cases which reveal that India needs a more dense healthcare cooperative network. Since cooperative hospitals in tune with the spirit of service run on the principle of being ‘Not-for-Profit’ they need to be supported by the governments more liberally, without however interfering with their governance and administration.

The foremost objective of this chapter was to present an overview of the cooperative healthcare sector in Argentina by reviewing its brief history, components and the role these healthcare cooperatives play in the society. The second objective was to look at how these cooperatives have helped women and the local communities in which they operate.

This paper has used chiefly secondary data derived from various academic papers and official and government websites which publish cooperative sector-related information. The intention was to construct a concise yet detailed study that would be of help to other researchers in the field of healthcare cooperatives since the data related to Argentina is highly scattered and frequently found not up to date.

The research has found that health cooperatives in Argentina have aided in overcoming problems in the sector such as sectoral fragmentation, negligence and frequently inadequate standards of care management as well as operational and implementation failures that the private and government healthcare players have been accused of being fraught with. Furthermore, the cooperatives have frequently played a complementary or supplementary role rather than a competitive one with the private and government players.

Through the examples presented in this chapter, it is evident that health cooperatives in Argentina are making large impacts in the healthcare domain along with positively impacting women, marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society and the community. It only remains to be seen now how far this sector will grow in the future and how many more lives will be benefitted.

In August, 2015, Serena Williams, one of the most successful female athletes of all time, was body shamed in a New York Times article. The incident highlights the issue of unequal treatment of male and female athletes – while a muscular frame enhances masculinity for male athletes, a muscular physique invites body shaming for female athletes. In this study, symbolic interactionist theories regarding the generalized other are called into question. While George Mead's theorizing exhibits a nonproblematic role taking of the generalized other in a cooperative manner, this study reports the presence of paradoxical generalized others, and consequently, the incongruent role taking of a latent generalized other by individuals. This study investigates if the issue of body image exists among college female athletes, if college female athletes experience the dilemma of choosing between outstanding performance with a muscular frame or maintaining traditional female appearance. To provide answers to the question, female athletes in a midwest university were invited to fill out a survey. The survey results confirm the existence of a paradox between performance and appearance among some college female athletes.