Education programmes for manufacturing cooperatives: United Kingdom and South Africa study

Cooperatives are community-based enterprises which are collectively owned by members and skills are key resources to their success. A cooperative is defined as an autonomous enterprise run on democratic principles for the mutual benefit of its members. In South Africa and the United Kingdom cooperatives play a key role in creating access to products and services in local communities. The rate of success among UK cooperatives is higher than that of South Africa. The investment in the training of cooperatives by CoopsUK is amongst the reasons that the UK cooperative movement has been successful. The efforts of the South African government and the Department of Trade and Industry to train cooperatives did not yield the required results instead there has been a continuous rise in the number of cooperatives that have ceased to exist. This study uses a desk review approach to understand the themes in training of manufacturing and operationally fit cooperatives. The results show that financial management, resource allocations, cost management, efficiency and production management are critical areas of training. The lack of a strong cooperative movement to support manufacturing cooperatives in South Africa is a problem and directions for future research are provided on the last section of this paper.