Integrated cooperative management at the Julio Zenón Acosta Basic Cooperative Production Unit (Original)

Abstract

The article summarizes the research carried out at the Julio Zenón Acosta Basic Cooperative Production Unit, whose objective is to propose an action plan that allows the implementation of cooperative principles and contributes to the improvement of the entity's integral cooperative management. The methodology used, based on dialectical materialism, included theoretical, empirical and statistical methods, as well as the "Cooperative Mirror" tool, developed by the World Food Program. A strategic diagnosis was carried out to analyze the set of external and internal factors that influence its development and a self-diagnosis on the materialization of cooperative principles; the latter showed that in this unit there is a contradiction between cooperativism in fact and in law. The self-diagnosis carried out by the Board of Directors in 2022 and later in 2023, about the level of knowledge of the cooperative principles and their implementation, originated a collective reflection about the causes that generated the gaps between the "should be" and the "to be" of the cooperative and the adoption of a set of actions leading to the improvement of the cooperative integral management. These actions contribute to eliminate the existing gaps and increase the cooperative's capacity to achieve greater economic and productive efficiency, provide better service to the workers and the communities where they cohabit; they also constitute a working tool for the continuous improvement of cooperative management.