UK Society for Co-operative Studies to host virtual lecture on governance

Prof Sonja Novkovic, from the University of St Mary’s, Nova Scotia, will discuss lessons from a four-year research project

This year’s Co-operatives Fortnight lecture, hosted by the UK Society for Co-operative Studies, will be delivered as an online webinar on 29 June, from 6.30-8pm.

In her lecture, Prof Sonja Novkovic, from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, will focus on governance in co-operatives from a humanistic economics perspective.

Prof Novkovic, an economist and academic director of the university’s International Centre for Co‑operative Management, will look at how co-ops safeguard human dignity; at democratic decision-making; and the engagement of members and stakeholders – including what structures they deploy to ensure such engagement.

Sonja Novkovic

Her lecture will also explore the processes co-operatives use to avoid the pitfalls attributed to them in the corporate governance literature.

Prof Novkovic also chairs the International Co‑operative Alliance Research Committee and is a member of the Council of Economists at the USA’s National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). Her research focuses on economic democracy, including labour‑managed and co‑operative firms, the social economy and comparative economic systems. 

She will base the lecture on her work as a collaborator on a four‑year research project on co‑operative governance funded by FWO (a public research foundation in Belgium).

Details of the free lecture and how to book are available here.

A registered charity, the society exists to enable members to share critical practice and engaged research on co-operatives and co-operation.