Managing any socially innovative company seems very difficult. All the regular management functions seem undermined by a changed distribution of power. We should speak rather of governance than of management. However, to be able to govern effectively, we should be able to educate the future and present leaders of socially innovative companies. This requires appropriate tools. As was stated by Glaser (1966) guru of instructional science, to develop an educational program, you have to know what you want your learners to know and what they already know. To meet that goal we should measure the management knowledge of co-operators. Unfortunately, management is not biochemistry or software engineering, where it can be strictly defined. It has more tacit character. Wagner and Sternberg (1991; Sternberg et al., 2000) proposed a tool and a procedure to develop such tools including Tacit Knowledge Inventory for Managers (TKIM). If developed for co-operatives, such tools might measure tacit knowledge and have unprecedented influence on development and recruitment of future co-operative or other social enterprise leaders. In this paper, I describe the process of development of a tool measuring tacit knowledge of co-operators, that is persons for whom a co-operative plays an important role in their lives. They are aware of a co-op's specific values and principles and are actively involved in their co-operative's functioning, regardless of their position. From the experts’ maps, I have elicited three main domains: (1) Values and needs domain, (2) Co-operative cohesion domain, (3) Co-operative management process. With the help of two practitioners, I wrote the case study stories with 10 possible solutions for each story. I sent this tool to 7 successful and highly appreciated practitioners from three countries. On the basis of agreement in the answers of the experts I have selected 10 case studies and created a key with which other participants can compare. This paper presents the first pilot results of testing the tool on a group of 29 persons, mainly from socially innovative companies.

1. Will your
intuition be
effective in
a social
enterprise?
!
Ryszard Stocki!
To be presented at
8th International Social Innovation Research
Conference, Glasgow, 5th - 7th September
2016
Developing
Tacit Knowledge
Inventory for Co-
operators (TKIC)

2. Social enterprises are different from ordinary companies
in many aspects, eg in:
Complexity
and
Cohesion
Goals
and
Strategy
Activities sometimes become goals
and people are never resources
Resources
$
Activities
Resources
Goal
$
Multiple goals are difficult to measure
Ordinary companies Social enterprises

3. Worker co-operatives are an example of
social enterprises which by definition
help to meet economic, social and
cultural needs of its members.
I was trying to find out a common
set of management rules that are
characteristic for co-operative
management and when defined
can help us develop co-
operative leaders who will be
successful in managing worker
co-operatives and other co-
operative enterprises.
by Wake Forest University School of Law

4. Using Cmap, I asked seven
experts to draw their maps
of effective co-operatives.
This is what they proposed:

5. Expert 1

6. Expert 2

7. Expert 3

8. Expert 4

9. Expert 5

10. Expert6

11. Expert 7

12. First conclusions
• Each map was completely different. It suggests that each expert may have a
different concept of what co-operative management is.
• To elicit essential common knowledge the maps had to be thoroughly
analysed and the content compared and categorized.
• Each map was like a
good lecture on co-
operative
management.
• Each expert had
interesting
perspective, but…
by UN Women Asia and the Pacific

13. Map
analysis:
Building
vocabu-
lary and
finding
most
common
concepts
Values and needs domain!
1. Appreciating diversity of values among members?
2. Balancing between individual and social needs
3. Finding a fit between personal values and the type of
organization that people develop
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Co-operative cohesion domain!
5. Promoting psychological unity within a co-op – creating
community.
6. Ensuring high quality of decision making in a co-op.
7. Prioritizing the role of governance systems in a co-op.
Co-operative management process!
8. Building strategy in a co-op.
9. Ensuring the effectiveness of organizational systems in a
co-op.
10. Ensuring specificity of business management processes in
a co-op.
10 Most common themes
Values and needs
Co-operative
cohesion
Management
processes

14. Second conclusion
Co-operative
management
knowledge most
probably has
tacit (intuitive)
character and we
have to analyse it
by means of tools
used for analysing
and diagnosing
tacit knowledge
based on real
case studies
(critical incidents),
which are then
solved by experts.
I asked two experts to elicit more than 20 such case studies and seven experts
(5 new) to evaluate 200 specific solutions.

15. An example of such a case study - the problem
A consumer co-operative finds out
that their competitors are
successfully using weekly grocery
flyers to use a few very low prices to
get people in their store. Any
marketing specialist can see that
the flyers are manipulative in
focusing the customer’s attention on
some selected products while the
remaining products, not in the flyer,
are not low prices. To make things
more difficult for the co-operative,
the customers from time to time
complain about lack of such flyers
in their co-op as, according to them,
it makes shopping more difficult. For
shoppers who see the co-operative
as 'just another store' they expect
flyers but the Flyers make the co-op
look like 'just another store'. How
should the co-op react?
by Christopher Porter at Flickr

16. An example of such a case study - the problem
Possible solutions!
1. Start publishing their flyers and use the same
strategy in lowering the price of some products
to sell others more expensive ones.
2. Start printing flyers but make them
completely different, more of an educational
tool explaining that the cooperative is
competitive on a basket of groceries and saves
you having to shop around.
3. Publish not weekly but monthly consumer
reports comparing the prices and quality of
coop’s and the competition products.
4. Start a “No Flyers” campaign in the shops to
explain how flyers bring about a lack of
customer loyalty and price war destructive to
the mutual interests of stores and its customers.
5. Start a “Lowest price” campaign showing the
customers that the co-op is always offering the
lowest prices for their products. Explain that
the apparent difference may be due to either
lower quality of the competition’s products or
their unethical, unfair practices.
by Jim Forest at Flickr

17. For the final version of the
Tacit Knowledge Inventory !
for Co-operators!
I chose only 57% of the solutions from 10 case studies, where
the seven international co-operative experts agreed on.
by

18. Pilot study with 29 participants
The main measure of expertise was the
difference between the person’s
answers and those of experts. The
results were calculated for three
domains. The histograms and
Cronbach’s alphas show that the tool
may bacome a good diagnostic method
for future co-operative managers.
Values (α=.81) Cohesion (α=.89)Management (α=.65)
Distribution !
of all results (α=.90)

19. Final conclusions
• Disagreement of the first group of experts suggests tacit and domain
specific character of co-operative management knowledge
• 57% agreement of experts and historical and geographical spread of the co-
operative movement point to universality of the co-operative values and
principles.
• The scarcity of co-op management programs is a result of complexity and
negligence.
by Alan Levine at Flickr

20. This tool is a part of a larger EU research project “Co-op
Isomorphism”
The research and writing of the paper was sponsored by
EU Marie Curie Actions – International Outgoing,
Fellowship Grant no. 623051.
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