First Community Cooperative’s Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Creating Shared Value

Abstract

Cooperative history has provided many lessons that can be drawn upon by present generation who advocates for cooperative revolution. Some of the failures identified were: (1) owners/members have no feeling of ownership; (2) capital was externally provided; (3) cheating was rampant; (4) lack of education (farmers, who turned squatters, became managers). Different groups persevered to continue its effort of making cooperatives successful. Leaders learned to adopt policies that became the so-called “cooperative principles”. Other significant lessons learned include (1) start small (from simple to complex); (2) good intentions are not enough; (3) internal capital must be sourced out; (4) ownership; and, (5) need for unity, cooperation. Cooperatives made headway in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. The Americans learned of it in early 20th century. In 1938, a protestant missionary successfully introduced a credit union in Tuguegarao, Cagayan here in the Philippines. Since then, cooperatives in the country started to be formed by different groups.