Socio-economic Organizations, Fairtrade Policy, and Developing Business to Ensure Success

QUESTIONS (1) Short Answer: Choose four of the eight organizations listed below.

• The Rotary Club of Kelowna The University of Victoria

• Agropur Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia

• Beau’s Brewery (Ontario) Central Okanagan Foundation

• British Columbia Teachers’ Federation

•The University of Victoria

•Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia

•Central Okanagan Foundation

•The Canadian Automobile Association

For each of the four you choose,

(a) indicate if you think that Quarter, Mook and Armstrong would identify it as part of the social economy;

(b) if so, indicate what type of social economy organization it is (be as specific as possible) and explain the key features that identify it as such;

(c) if it is not part of the social economy, indicate what type of organization Quarter, Mook and Armstrong would consider it to be (again, be as specific as possible and identify key features). Explain your answers in one or two paragraphs each, making explicit the features of the organization that underlie you answer.

(2) Essay One) – approximately 1200 words

Fairtrade is a certification system established in 1988 by a cooperative of small coffee producers in Mexico and a Dutch NGO. The producers in Mexico were frustrated that they had to sell their coffee through “middle men” who took most of the profits from the coffee. They wanted more direct access (shorter supply chains, fewer middle men) to Northern consumers, many of whom had expressed their interest in buying directly from small producers. Developing a certification system would enable Northern consumers to be able to more easily identify coffee that was fairly produced and provided greater benefits to small producers.

To this end the new certification system included:

(a) a guaranteed minimum price, which is higher than the market price (to deal with price fluctuations in commodity markets and to ensure the coffee farmers would have a sustainable livelihood);

(b) a requirement that small producers would be democratically organized in cooperatives or associations (to provide producers with a greater ability to negotiate prices, to improve their organizational capacity and, thereby to improve their quality, produce more sustainably, etc.;

(c) and buyers were encouraged to sign long-term contracts with farmers (to ensure income stability for producers) and provide other forms of support to producers (to improve product quality, to promote more sustainable production, to develop local infrastructure, to diversify their production, etc.).

The initial buyers of Fairtrade coffee were almost exclusively Northern cooperatives, NGOs and independent coffee buyers (some of who formed their own buying cooperative, Cooperative Coffees). Many of these organization (100%ers), only buy (and sell) fairtrade coffee. Only after these small buyers proved that there was a market for fairtrade coffee (and boycotts by consumers of large coffee retailers such as Starbucks), did larger corporate buyers enter the fairtrade market. Unlike the smaller companies, however, they only coverted a small pertcenage (2-10%) of their coffee sales to Fairtrade coffee, preferring instead to promote other certification programs with lower standards. These large corporations, however, because they are so much larger, actually tend to buy more fair trade coffee than the small, more dedicated companies that buy/sell only fairtrade coffee.

You work in the procurement office of a large Canadian University which has a Fairtrade policy. Your office is trying to determine if they should purchase Fairtade Coffee from one of three type of vendors:

• a small, pioneering social economy business (such as JustUs! Coffee Roasters, a small cooperative in Nova Scotia which was the first company to sell Fairtrade products in Canada);

 • a social business (such as Reunion Island, a medium-sized privately-owned company in Ontario, which has recently become a B-corp);

• a larger corporate actor (such as Starbucks, a large multi-national corporation which is the world’s largest buyer of fair trade coffee and currently operates on your campus. Starbucks is popular with some on the campus, but which has come under attack from several NGOs and, student and consumer organizations.).

You have been tasked with writing a report which recommends a single supplier for the University. In your report to are supposed to explain how the organizational structures of the different types of coffee buyers are likely to condition the benefits that they supply to small producers and how their practices and performance are likely to align with the University’s commitment to social justice and sustainability. In answering this question you should develop both normative arguments (moral, ethical, legitimacy) and pragmatic arguments (regarding the organizations’ efficiency, capacity, etc.), and indicate how you balance these (if necessary). 

(3) Essay Two– approximately 1200 words

In Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other large cities in Canada, there are many large communities of recent immigrants (East Asian, South Asian, Somali, Caribbean, etc.). In these communities, women may have a particular problem in earning a sustainable livelihood. The causes of this situation are varied, and in some instances overlapping, e.g., they have lower levels of formal education, their qualifications are not recognized in Canada, they work in low-paying sectors of the economy (service sectors such as food service, home care, child care), they are not fully fluent in English, they have limited access to public services (including transportation), they have primary childcare (and eldercare) responsibilities in the home, they face discrimination from some employers, etc. To help to address this situation, some members in these communities and allied groups have been mooting the possibility of setting up their own businesses in sectors (e.g., elder care, restaurants/catering, etc.) in which community members already work (or could be easily trained to work). Developing their own business might be helpful not only in providing (greater) remuneration for these women, but also in offering them more amenable working conditions (more flexibility in hours, greater job security, some degree of autonomy and/or participation in decision-making, etc.). Operating businesses in these sectors might also meet a consumer need of these communities (and, thereby, provide the women with an initial loyal customer base on which they can build).

You are a member of one such community, with a history of participation in socio-economic movements. Explain your position on how the community should go about developing the business to ensure long term success. Include your thoughts on: (i) the vision that it should promote (to inspire and mobilize potential participants); (ii) the types of practices that it will need to engage in to establish and operate the business, and; (iii) the type of organizational structure that will most effectively align with its vision and help it to fulfill its goals.