Participação democrática em cooperativas de crédito na era digital

Abstract

The digital revolution is transforming society. The way people work, connect with friends and family, how they educate themselves, communicate and have fun. The different sectors are also affected by this, from education to health, to financial institutions, and, of course, to cooperatives. While co-ops have gained prominence through platform cooperativism in the current context due to the urgency for fairer business models for collaborative economics, traditional cooperatives do not appear to be digitizing beyond their pillar business. Little innovation is reported in governance and cooperative differentials. In view of this, this study analyzed aspects of democratic participation in credit cooperatives in the digital age, proposing ways of its effectiveness for the cooperative system studied. For this, a quantitative research was carried out with 52 cooperatives of a cooperative credit system and, in a second qualitative stage, the experiences of digital assembly already performed by them were reported and evaluated. The three experiences were a virtual assembly, a simultaneous assembly in two states, and a physical assembly format, but with recorded content. As a result, it was seen that cooperatives are aware and living the processes of the digitization of their members, but because of cultural factors and fear of changing processes, few have tested new models. In view of the possibilities indicated by the literature and existing experiences, the proposal for the system suggested: the adoption of digital tools for transparency, involving the members as a user using co-creation techniques, providing moments of participation during the year and in the assemblies, and finally, testing different digital models of general assemblies to identify the best user experience for the members. The best practices should be considered, such as: respect for the rites of mandatory guidelines, security, attendance, cost, capacity for interaction, access to the member, transparency, duration and mediation. The challenge of the digital era for cooperatives is not the technology itself, but the cultural change needed to enhance member participation through digitalization and the mindset change that this era that can be truly collaborative proposes again to cooperatives.