Pellervo Coop Center
About Pellervo
Pellervo is a service and a lobbying organisation for all Finnish co-operatives and mutuals and a forum for co-operative activities.
Our goal is to make the co-operative and mutual business model more known to the public and offer the co-operative model as a competitive alternative for those thinking about starting a business.
Pellervo was founded in 1899 and the Pellervo name comes from the national epic of Finland Kalevala where Sampsa Pellervoinen is the patron of field and harvest.
Advocacy work
Pellervo strives to influence the legislative work and the economic and financial policies in Finland to accommodate the cooperative business model.
Pellervo’s message to the decision-makers: Diversity of business models increases economic performance
- One business model – investor owned – is not enough
- Cooperative businesses play a significant role in the everyday life of people
- The scope of cooperatives is constantly expanding
- Over 3 000 cooperatives and mutuals
- Over 7 million memberships
- Cooperatives mean Finnish ownership
- They invest in Finland
Current issues and themes:
- The government's Entrepreneurship Strategy
- The Parliament's Co-operative Group
- Government’s action plan 2019-2023
- Entrepreneurship education at schools
- Research and teaching
- Start-up advice
- Co-operative governance
- Sustainability and CSR
Dissertation: Finnish agricultural co-operatives are critical in appointing external members to their boards
Pellervo Coop Center’s Director of Cooperation Kari Huhtala’s dissertation on the governance of Finnish agricultural co-operatives shows that agricultural cooperatives are critical in appointing external experts to their boards. The number of women on these boards is also quite low and has not increased over the past ten years. The governance culture of cooperatives favors board selections from within the cooperative.
Cooperative education and research in Finland are still limited
Despite their success, cooperatives remain an invisible giant in the education offered by higher education institutions in Finland. Finland has some professors focusing on cooperative studies and also professors of practice funded by cooperatives and mutual companies.