A cooperative is defined as a business owned by the people who use its services.

The cooperative movement emerged in the nineteenth century in Europe,

particularly as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Robert Owen, generally
considered the father of the cooperative movement, was the owner of
successful cotton mills. He believed in putting his workers in a good environment
with access to education for themselves and their children and attempted to establish
"villages of cooperation" where workers would be able to rise out of poverty by their
own efforts. Many took up Owen's ideas, modifying them and forming their own
cooperatives.

Expanding throughout the world, cooperatives have been successful in a number of

fields, including retailing, banking, energy, housing, and the processing and
marketing of agricultural products.
A cooperative (also co-operative or co-op) is defined by the International Co-
operative Alliance's Statement on the Co-operative Identity 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.[1]
A cooperative is a legal entity owned and controlled by its members. Alternatively,
the term may be used loosely to signify its members' ideology. Cooperatives are
based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity,
and solidarity. The defining point in a cooperative is that the members have a close
association with the cooperative as producers or consumers of its products or
services, or as its employees. However, it is the principle of "one member—one
vote" which separates it from capital stock corporations.
Historical View
The cooperative movement began in Europe in the nineteenth century, primarily
in England and France. The industrial revolution and the increasing mechanization
of the economy transformed society and threatened the livelihoods of many workers.
The concurrent labor and social movements and the issues they attempted to address
describe the climate at the time.
Robert Owen (1771–1858) is considered the father of the cooperative movement. A
Welshman who made his fortune in the cotton trade, Owen believed in putting his
workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their
children. These ideas were put into effect successfully in the cotton mills of New
Lanark, Scotland. It was here that the first cooperative store was opened. Spurred on
by the success of this, Owen had the idea of forming "villages of cooperation," where
workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making
their own clothes, and ultimately becoming self-governing. He tried to form such
communities in Orbiston in Scotland and in New Harmony, Indiana in the United
States of America, but both communities failed.
Although Owen inspired the cooperative movement, others—such as William King
(1786–1865)—took his ideas and made them more workable and practical. King
believed in starting small, and realized that the working classes would need to set up
cooperatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a
monthly periodical called The Cooperator, the first edition of which appeared on
May 1, 1828. This gave a mixture of cooperative philosophy and practical advice
about running a shop using cooperative principles. King advised people not to cut
themselves off from society, but rather to form a society within a society, and to start
with a shop because, "We must go to a shop every day to buy food and necessaries—
why then should we not go to our own shop?" He proposed sensible rules, such as
having a weekly account audit, having 3 trustees, and not having meetings in pubs
(to avoid the temptation of drinking profits). A few poor weavers joined together to
form the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society at the end of 1843. The Rochdale
Pioneers, as they became known, set out the Rochdale Principles in 1844, which
have been highly influential throughout the cooperative movement.
Cooperative communities are now widespread, with one of the largest and most
successful examples being at Mondragón in the Basque country of Spain.
In North America, the caisse populaire movement started by Alphonse Desjardins
in Quebec, Canada, pioneered credit unions. Desjardins wanted to bring desperately
needed financial protection to working people. In 1900, from his home in Lévis,
Quebec, he opened North America's first credit union, marking the beginning of the
Mouvement Desjardins.
While they have not taken root so deeply as in Ireland or the U.S., credit unions are
also established in the UK. The largest are work-based, but many are now offering
services in the wider community. The Association of British Credit Unions Ltd
(ABCUL) represents the majority of British Credit Unions. British Building
Societies developed into general-purpose savings & banking institutions with "one
member, one vote" ownership and can be seen as a form of financial cooperative
(although many "demutualized" into conventionally-owned banks in the 1980s and
1990s). The UK Cooperative Group includes both an insurance provider CIS and the
Cooperative Bank, both noted for promoting ethical investment.
Other important European banking cooperatives include the Crédit Agricole in
France, Migros and Coop Bank in Switzerland, and the Raiffeisen system in many
Central and Eastern European countries. The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and various
European countries also have strong cooperative banks. They play an important part
in mortgage credit and professional (farming) credit.
Cooperative banking networks, which were nationalized in Eastern Europe, work
now as real cooperative institutions. A remarkable development has taken place in
Poland, where the SKOK (Spółdzielcze Kasy Oszczędnościowo-
Kredytowe) network has grown to serve over one million members via 13,000
branches, and is larger than the country’s largest conventional bank.
In Scandinavia, there is a clear distinction between mutual savings banks (Sparbank)
and true credit unions (Andelsbank).