Managing the Cooperative Difference 

This workshop will engage participants in a process of thinking through the far reaching implications of adopting co-operative values and principles and the expectations they create for workers, consumers, suppliers and communities. Participants will leave with an understanding of the reality that if there is no co-operative difference the business is irrelevant.

Born and raised in Northeastern Nova Scotia, a region that suffers from chronic unemployment and out migration, Tom Webb has had a lifelong interest in regional business, economic and social progress and social justice. He was educated at St. Francis Xavier and Carleton universities and holds a Masters of Arts degree. He worked as a welfare worker for the city of Ottawa and joined the Government of Canada in 1971. In government he held various positions including Special Assistant to the President of the Privy Council, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister and Special Advisor to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. Upon leaving government service he worked as Social Economic Program Officer with the Vanier Institute of the Family, and later as a consultant to governments and various local and national cooperative and credit union organizations and businesses. In 1986 he became Manager of Member Relations and later Manager of Government and Corporate Communications with Coop Atlantic, Atlantic Canada’s regional wholesale, retail and agricultural cooperative central. From 1993 to September 1999 he was Director of the St.FX University Extension Department. St.FX Extension has a long history of involvement in adult education, cooperatives and credit unions and distance and continuing education. In 1999 he created Global Cooperation, a consulting organization providing services to credit unions, cooperatives and universities in Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Spain. He has worked with cooperatives and credit unions on management, marketing, planning, governance and globalization. Mr. Webb has written numerous articles on a variety of issues and is currently working on a book tentatively titled, Global Cooperation: An Alternative Approach to Globalization. He has pioneered MOCA, Marketing Our Cooperative Advantage, and Cooperative Accounting and played a leading role in the development of the Masters of Management Cooperatives and Credit Unions – MMCCU at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. He is MMCCU Program Manager and a founder of the Centre of Excellence in Accounting and Reporting for Cooperatives. He has made hundreds of presentations across Canada and abroad and has been the keynote speaker at the ICA Congress in Quebec City, The United Kingdom Cooperative Congress 2000, The Cooperative Managers Association in Boston in 2000, The New South Wales Federation of Cooperatives Annual Meeting 2001. Mr. Webb lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, with his wife Marion.