The Statement on the Co-operative Identity, promulgated by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA), defines and guides co-operatives worldwide. It contains the definition of a co-operative as a special form of organization, the values of co-operatives, and the currently accepted cooperative principles that direct their behavior and operation. The Statement with the latest revision of the cooperative principles was adopted by ICA in 1995.
According to the Statement, a co-operative is defined as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise." Co-operatives "are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of co-operative founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others."
- For a discussion of the seven cooperative principles see Rochdale Principles.
Famous quotes containing the words statement on, statement and/or identity:
“He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“Growing has no connection with audience. / Audience has no
connection with identity. / Identity has no
connection with a universe. / A universe has no
connection with human nature.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)