New Age Business: Community Corporations That Work

Year Published:  1987
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX3203

Abstract: 
The author of NEW AGE BUSINESS, Greg MacLeod is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Breton who has been involved, since 1961, in a variety of community initiatives as a priest and community organizaer. He is the founding chairman of New Dawn Enterprises in Cape Breton, one of the community development corporations described in this book. NEW AGE BUSINESS also examines JAL Enterprises in eastern Quebec, and the Mondragon network of co-opeatives in the Basque region of nothern Spain. MacLeod explains that while the experiments in community economic development which he looks at differ widely from each other, they have several important characteristics in common:
(a) their basic goal is community development and improvement through the use of economic resources.
(b) rather than being one--shot affairs, they are attempts to develop an enabling structure to serve the
local community on a long-term basis;
(c) they wish to be autonomous and self-sustaining; and
(d) most of all, they are local self-help movements based upon the history and traditions particularly
of particular groups of people."
MacLeod sees these characteristics as the model for community development corporation, which he regards as a more viable approach to economic life than profit-oriented capitalism. Two chapters deal with the more technical aspects of starting community development corporations, such as organizational structure, types of management and control, raising money, and start-up.