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.