An important feature that Agriterra supports is change. Cooperatives do need to change if they want to improve their economic performance and increase the benefits to the member farmers. This often concerns changes in business strategy e.g. starting a new processing plant for coffee, milk etc. These kinds of changes calls for changes within the organisation as well i.e. with regard to competences, internal governance, internal capitalisation and member commitment among others.
Over the years, Agriterra has stimulated change in cooperatives with an emphasis on the governance, for example by training and advising leaders and with exposure & study tours for them to their peers in the Netherlands. In fewer cases managers did participate also to such study tours. Generally these tours have yielded considerable results in exposing leaders to different approaches and embracing new ideas and quite some improvements have been reported with regard to new ways of carrying out activities.
In this process of organisational change, cooperative managers play a key role. Therefore, the theme of this year’s study tour is “Masterclass Cooperative management: understanding growth and change drivers for a cooperative setup in a dynamic environment; what is the role of the Manager?”
The focus will be on the role of the managers as interfaces within the organisation in the following three relationships: manager – leaders, manager – staff, and manager – members. The delegation will be trained or change management, and visit workshop conducted by their peers in Dutch cooperatives like Rabobank, Agrico, DOC, De Samenwerking, CZAV and AVEBE.
