Section

Research Publications

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Education - Co-operation and Learning

Since it came to power in 1997, the Labour government has made it clear that education is at the top of the agenda. Many reforms have taken place since then, with the most recent legislation encouraging greater engagement with the private sector.

This report argues that education is too important to be left only to state or private sector provision. We believe that there is now a need and an opportunity to develop new solutions and models of service delivery that can unleash the benefits of commitment from a wider range of stakeholder groups. In particular this report draws upon international experience to demonstrate the benefits that derive from the direct involvement in governance of schools of a range of stakeholders and their success in developing a vocationally based curriculum.

Co-operation and mutual enterprise is an under-realised resource for those interested in twenty-first century learning and teaching. It is also true that learning and teaching is an under-realised opportunity for those in twenty-first century co-operative and mutual enterprise.

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Mutuals and Their Communities

Many PLCs claim to be community focused, seeing a potential commercial advantage in this. Mutuals are different. Because of their founding and guiding principles, mutuals have always been an integral part of their communities. Indeed, many mutuals were established precisely to serve a need in a community that was not being met by the traditional private sector. For mutuals, an involvement in there communities is not an ‘add-on’ to their business but rather is part of the very rationale for having chosen the mutual form of business organisation in the first place.

This report quantifies the extent to which the mutual sector – comprising co-operatives, building societies, friendly societies and mutual insurers – contributes to the economy, and to the community more generally.

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Public Service Reform - Building the Mutual State

Ed Mayo and Henrietta Moore

Mutual hospitals, non-profit schools and co-operative housing are the future for public services according to this pamphlet, the outcome of six months testing and debate on the web-based think-tank www.themutualstate.org.

Community-based services, including health, childcare, residential care, housing, leisure, crime prevention and education are ideally suited to mutual forms of governance, with the involvement of different stakeholders including employees, government and customers varying according to the nature of the service. The defining ideal is local public services designed and delivered by local stakeholders, offering accountability, flexibility and value for money.

The report calls on Government selectively to free up frontline public services, starting with health, education and local authority services to operate as independent social enterprises supported by the state rather than running them as arms of government.

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Employees Direct


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Ownership Matters

Ian Hargreaves, Cliff Mills and Jonathan Michie

Ownership Matters – New Mutual Business Models argue that new mutualism is the future for community ownership and control of service-based corporations, offering a viable ‘third way’ in which the decision making power of corporations is put into the hands of customers and communities.

The traditional investor-owned private company continues to put the goals of its stockholders and executives first, while customers come in a distant second. Using the new mutual approach ownership is transferred by way of turning customers into equal shareholders with a significant collective voice. The drive for financial efficiency and success is as hard-edged as in a PLC, but the foremost imperative