Making organizational changes and strengthening the cooperative mutual aid

Orion has just embarked in a difficult journey, which will deeply change its entrepreneurial profile: production activities that have so far been directly managed by the cooperative will be progressively carried out by subsidiary companies, which will also count on the capital of other shareholders, and hence widen the opportunities of development and income.

In the long term, the cooperative will therefore mainly deal with what is technically defined as “supply”. In other words, Orion will entrust its members with professional and working tasks in subsidiary companies, in order to make the best possible use of their work.

This process will somehow change the traditional relationship of mutuality, since all members will carry out their job in a subsidiary company they will “own together with other people”, and at the same time they will still be employed by Orion, the actual “control station” of the whole system.

These changes require a promotion and optimization of all the tools of cooperative democracy and participation. An intense and demanding process is already on its way to adjust many tools to the new conditions. This has been the case, among others, of regulations, communication, social budget and member training. Without any doubts, these changes will have an impact on the members themselves, who will increasingly have to give their own contribution to the management of such a complex enterprise. Which means that, not only will it be necessary to deal with technical issues concerning the establishment and functioning of cooperative and subsidiaries, but it will also be fundamental to start a process of –so to say– member qualification.

The final goal is that of boosting Orion's mutualistic nature, in order to show that the challenges of the market can be addressed playing on the technical and organizational plan, but also, and primarily, aiming at consistency with the principles and the rules of cooperation.