Conclusions and Recommendations
Cooperatives manifest their collectivist nature through their VMGs, indicating that they are formal organizations that adopt collectivism as a way of life. They become effective facilitators and mechanisms for people or groups to work together in a cooperative manner to attain their common aspirations for better economic, social and political conditions. Members express their aspirations on their codified VMGs, which they aim to achieve through their business operations, social interactions, and political and governance ideals. As found in the study, cooperatives have reflected their collectivist thoughts in their VMGs in three dimensions: economic, social and political. To improve their economic conditions, members would work together to ensure the sufficiency of their financial resources and to meet the members’ needs for goods and services. To improve their social conditions, the members would seek happiness, peace, and a high quality of life, which they could achieve by enforcing norms such as discipline, trustworthiness, unity, harmony, and mutual respect. To improve their political condition, members elect their officers, and they expect them to be strong, dynamic, dependable, and respected role models. These are just a few of the notable economic, social, and political goals that the members have established. There are several collectivist ideas that were reflected in cooperatives’ VMGs. Therefore, cooperatives are indeed relevant catalysts in contemporary societies, with the potential to improve the living standards of their members as well as the society in which they operate.
The study implies that collectivism as a philosophy is still relevant and it is being adopted by collective institutions such as cooperatives. Collectivism encourages members to work collectively and it could help them to succeed in improving their economic, social and political conditions. Indeed, the success or failure of collectivist institutions is determined by how their members embrace collectivism as a philosophy and by how they work collectively to attain their common aspirations. Due to this, cooperatives must constantly reinforce collectivism among their members and encourage collectivist behavior when new members join. When cooperatives recruit new members, they must emphasize on behavioral change by introducing expected collectivist behavior and efforts. A pre-membership seminar should be held to educate new members on the cooperatives existing VMGs in order for them to embrace those common aspirations and participate on the achievement of those codified VMGs. Adopting collectivism as a way of life may provide long-term security and enable cooperatives to become effective economic, social, and political catalysts.
Based on the results, specific recommendations were drawn. The collectively agreed economic, social and political aspirations must be reiterated and inculcated to the members and the elected officers. To attain this, the collective aspirations must be tackled during general assembly meetings and during pre-membership education seminars. The members must be provided by management reports and written documents on the status of the VMGs. In addition, the members must be reminded of their responsibilities in terms of patronizing the cooperatives’ business and in participating in social and political affairs. Funding and support must be provided such as: (1) the cooperatives’ educational training fund (CETF) must be pooled together by cooperatives in order to organize trainings that would educate BODs and the management on the importance of collectivism on attaining their economic, social and political aspirations, which can help them improve their reports during general assemblies (GA) and pre-membership education seminars (PMES); (2) the cooperatives must allocate a social development fund to be used for social gatherings (i.e., family day, Christmas party, acquaintance party, etc.) in order to strengthen social bonds among members and develop stronger collectivist behavior; and (3) the cooperatives’ community development fund (CDF) must be used to extend social services to the community in order to encourage everyone in the community to participate in a collective action and to foster a culture of unity, oneness, harmony and mutual respect among members and the community.
The study has limitations since it was conducted in one region in the Philippines, however the results could significantly contribute to all collective institutions and cooperatives globally. Thus, the study recommends that: (1) collectivism as a philosophy is still relevant in collective institutions such as cooperative; (2) collectivism must be inculcated to the members of collective actions so that they can effectively meet their aspirations; (3) VMGs should not serve as a mere written texts but it should be interpreted through the lens of collectivism for the members to assimilate them and manifest collectivistic behavior.
While the study found that collectivism is reflected in the VMGs of cooperatives, the study has some limitations in terms of exploring the actual practice of collectivism. There is still an ongoing interest on the dimensions of collectivism as conceptualized by Hofstede (1980). Hence future research about cooperatives can delve into these interesting research gaps.