There doesn't have to be one I don't think. Like a local farm co-op, it's meant to be sustainable so growth should be slow and natural, and should realistically find a maximum.
That means that certain products/services aren't a good fit. So I think if you are part of one and you have lofty aspirations for what you are working on, you should plan for the day you outgrow the co-op and need to hire a bunch of people.
A lot of people are saying that you don’t have to grow workers coops and they can (with the implication that they should) remain small. A counter example is the Mondragon Corporation, which is a worker coop/federation of worker coops which employs 75,000 people.
I like the idea of a coop for many reasons, one is that’s it’s not tied to the “must have a huge possibility for growth” any VC backed venture would have
I think the question was just how to handle more people joining. Or perhaps how to scale the practice across society. Both interesting questions IMO, even if not what GP meant.
Depends on your definition of "scale" but mostly the answer is - as others have pointed out - that they are not designed to "scale" in the way many people use that word.
However there are some co-ops who make platform software and questions of "scale" might apply there, so maybe some interesting reading? Check out https://www.loomio.org/ - their company handbook is online somewhere.
While mondragon is a great example of a "scaled" cooperative. There are other (somewhat smaller, but still meaningful) examples. Take Cooperative Home Care Associates (http://www.chcany.org) around 1500 homecare workers in NYC, or the Arizmendi bakeries https://www.arizmendi.coop/ that have 5 bakeries and other businesses all growing and providing living wage jobs in the Bay Area.
We chose to use a holding company model for our cooperative https://www.staffing.coop so that we could have many startups and conversions underneath one holding company worker cooperative.
Imho, The long term goals may be similar to what "normal" companies may have. Cooperatives are just means to an end but generally one may achieve lofty ambitions in any type of organization. The document sums up very nicely the pros and cons of cooperative targeting freelancers. The only thing one has to decide is wether one will reach sustainability in a normal company or in a cooperative - the journeys are two different wild adventures.
Local cooperatives can form networks which operate similar to a conglomerate business, with the network helping to bring in business and direct it to participating coops, or even form supply chains where local coops are providing goods and services to each other.
This allows the complex efficiencies of a capitalist corporation, but allows the people doing the work to retain direct control over their local workplaces and not be beholden to investors.
Mondragon in Spain is the most famous example of this.
As such networks develop, starting a new cooperative venture may become more attractive to some entrepreneurs than a traditional startup, which in turn drives growth of the network.
Cooperatives are a self organizing network effect scaling pattern. They self scale because members are intrinsically motivated to join, humans are pack animals and we like to work together in a village. Very few people want to be entirely alone.
Capitalism is actually very unhealthy from a mental health perspective, so the cooperative model creates the safety net opportunity to take risks and try new things.
You don’t. If you want to grow you either convert into a partnership with the normal up or out mechanism where the only people with a vote are the partners or elsewhere into a for profit company. Worker cooperatives are by and for the day ideologically committed.
That means that certain products/services aren't a good fit. So I think if you are part of one and you have lofty aspirations for what you are working on, you should plan for the day you outgrow the co-op and need to hire a bunch of people.