[bonaldi]

I’m not following your logic. The co-op is designed for everyone to care _more_ because they are part-owners and because the organisation is set up for a larger good than simple profit-making.

In practice the distinction has long been lost both for employees and members (customers), but the intent of the organisational structure was not for nobody to care; quite the opposite

[chatmasta]

But there are millions of part-owners. Every “member” of co-op (i.e. a customer in the same membership program that just lost all their data to this hack) is an owner of it. Maybe the employees get more “shares” but it’s not at all significant.

And at the executive governance level, there are a few dozen directors.

There is a CEO who makes £750k a year, so it has elements of traditional governance. I’m not saying the structure is entirely to blame for the slow reaction to the hack, or that there is zero accountability, but it’s certainly interesting to see the lack of urgency to restore business continuity.

My family used to own a local market, and as my dad said when I told him this story, “my father would have been on the farm killing the chickens himself if that’s what he had to do to ensure he had inventory to sell his customers.”

You simply won’t get that level of accountability in an organization with thousands of stakeholders. And a traditional for-profit corporation will have the same problems, but it will also have a stock price that starts tanking after half a quarter of empty shelves. The co-op is missing that sort of accountability mechanism.

[Henchman21]

Responsibility diluted to the point of no actual responsibility?