Are We Owners or Regular Customers? The Obscure Meaning of Ownership in Consumer Co-operatives

The impact of purchasing co-operatives

The proportion of hospital turnover linked to purchasing co-operatives will rise from the present 45% to 90% in 2010, according to the study Future Relevance and Consequences of Hospital Purchasing Cooperatives for Medical Technology Suppliers in Germany, commissioned by the German medical technology association BVMed from the consultancy firm Simon Kucher & Partners. ‘The bundling together...

Member Value in Co-operatives

Until today there is a research gap considering the question, what motivates a member to enter or leave a co-op, resp. what are the reasons to stay in a co-operative. The majority of studies about this topic mainly focus on economic factors and the rational behavior of the member. However, co-ops also have other purposes not associated with financial goals. The presented paper is proposing a ne...

Existential Owners for Ownership Types

This paper describes a lightweight approach to adding run-time checked downcasts to a language in the presence of ownership types without the need for a run-time representation of owners. Previous systems [6] have required owners of objects to be tracked and matched at run-time which is costly in terms of memory and performance. Our proposal avoids run-time overhead to deal with owners and also...

Reflection for the undergraduate on writing in the portfolio: where are we now and where are we going?

Introduction: The portfolio can be seen as a tool for assessmentof a variety of learning activities that differ in content, usage, andassessment. The portfolio not only meets the learner’s educationalneeds but also the political and public reassurance demand thatthe health professional has achieved the required competency ofthe curriculum that allows him or her to practice safely with orwithout...

Confronting three revolutions : Western European consumer co - operatives and their divergent development , 1950 - 2008