The University of Sherbrooke: IRECUS' History of Collaboration with the Cooperative Sector

The history of the Research and Education Institute for Co-operatives and Mutuals at the University of Sherbrooke (Institut de recherche et d'éducation pour les coopératives et les mutuelles de l'Université de Sherbrooke, IRECUS) is a testimony to an ongoing collaborative relationship between Quebec cooperatives and the Université de Sherbrooke. This collaboration began in 1967 with the creation of a Chair in Cooperation, and was formalized in 1976 with the adoption of the Institute's statutes, through which IRECUS became the institution we know today. This article analyses the mutual interaction between IRECUS and the cooperative sector in Quebec, distinguishing five specific periods in the history of IRECUS, each of which coincides with significant changes in the Quebec cooperative movement. In articulating these parallel developments in IRECUS and the co-operative movement in Quebec, we draw upon the notions of organizational identity and paradoxes of identity. This enables us to highlight the nature of the paradoxes experienced by both the cooperative movement and IRECUS and to identify the strategies that were deployed to deal with them.

Disponible en anglais uniquement.