Hello from the US! I'm building open-source ERP software for cooperatives

[aves]

Hello everyone,

workers.coop over on Mastadon suggested I head over and see how you folks are doing. I joined the community to get perspectives on cooperative management models from coops that actually exist and potentially to find collaborators for my project, Apoidea Cooperative Management Suite. I’m particularly in need of a front-end person, but the back end is sure to be quite challenging as well. My perspective is from the US but I’m willing to work with people internationally to make sure it works in multiple countries. If that strikes your interest then here’s a brief description, thanks for checking it out:

Apoidea is going to be an open-source Enterprise Resource Planning application specifically for worker’s cooperatives. While most ERP software focuses on driving top-down directives, the goal of this project is to enable the cooperatives to work, make decisions, and resolve disputes more efficiently than basically any other type of company.

The Model: The “Strategic Union”

Equity Controls: 1000 max shares, no speculation or outside sales.

Dual Power: A General Conference elects a Board and a President for oversight, then elects an operational CEO for business leadership.

Systemic Balance: Competing incentive structures ensure that oversight and operations have opposing goals, preventing either side from seizing unilateral power.

The Strategic Union model is based on the philosophy of Hierarchy by Consent, which explains that while hierarchies are helpful for communication and problem solving, they must be constrained so they don’t reinforce their own control structures.

Read Hierarchy by Consent: https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea/src/branch/main/PHILOSOPHY.md

Read the Articles of Incorporation: https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea/src/branch/main/INCORPORATION.md

Contribute on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea

[KingMob (John Evans)]

Cool project! Are you looking for organisations to test it with? Do you have a path to funding the development of the ERP?

I started reading your problem outline, came to this part

Compare this to worker’s cooperatives, with flat management structures. In these organizations, the lack of hierarchy likely leads to unconstrained sharing of information and decision-making authority based on circumstance rather than any kind of coordinated operational goals. In other words, workers may be spending too much time and effort making decisions and not enough time working, leading to reduced productivity, innovation, and wages compared to conventional firms.

I see the words “likely” and “may” in here and I’m wondering if you have seen these kinds of problems occurring in workers coops or might be reasoning from first principles that they exist? The coops I’ve worked with tend to use Sociocratic Circles to resolve the unconstrained discussion or some other system of specialisation.

I think the problem you’re trying to resolve is scaling worker cooperation to large enterprises and attracting executives to the role of coordinating the coop.

That sounds like it would be good on a societal level. Most of the coops represented on this forum have less than twenty members each though, and my guess would be that the members continue to work there because they like that scale of organisation. But there’s probably someone interested in Big Worker Coops, the classic example being Mondragon in Spain.

Thanks for posting, hope this was helpful, wish your project well!

[aves]

Hi John,

Thanks for your response, I’ll try to go through your questions one at a time.

My plan for testing is to get it stable and then configure a branch as a test case with “points” instead of money. I would pay to host it and invite some folks to come and try it out, with the hope that they could complete a small project such as an open-source app or a research article. Perhaps some readers here would be interested.

For funding, I don’t have any specific plan other than locating an interested lawyer for a non-state specific review of the Articles of Incorporation (and other docs) and paying personally to support my work. I don’t have a plan to pay developers so I hope to find a few part-timers who find it worthwhile. If you have any suggestions about this I’m all ears.

As for that quote from the article, I used those terms because I indeed haven’t had contact with any large cooperatives to learn more about their internal management, so I didn’t want to assume too much. I was inferring those problems exist based on my research into historical attempts at large worker’s cooperatives in the US, which had limited success when they were first attempted in the early 1900s.

The Sociocratic Circles sound like an interesting mechanism I would certainly like to read more about it as I’m interested in anything that can help the model work better. One of my goals is for the software to be flexible so people can try out different versions of the model.

I think the problem you’re trying to resolve is scaling worker cooperation to large enterprises and attracting executives to the role of coordinating the coop.

You’re spot on, at least that’s a huge part of it. This accepts upper level management roles as helpful for large organizations, particularly those engaged in large, integrated projects like vehicles. The example that stands out to me is Soviet science programs like Buran, which, unlike most Soviet enterprises, did use hierarchical management because the scale of the problems demanded that type of coordination among the scientists, engineers, and technicians.

I will say though that this doesn’t just solve the problem of attracting management talent, it more importantly constrains them and prevents them from seizing power or trending toward corruption. It’s funny you mention Mondragon, because I’ve been reading up on Mondragon Assembly and they seem like a very impressive example to learn more about.

Anyway, great discussion, I’ll check in again. Thanks