Building Co-operation: A Business History of the Co-operative Group, 1863–2013 examines the 150-year history of the Co-operative Group's (CG) national business model. The CG owned a number of cooperative businesses, including groceries, insurance companies, banking, and farms. The authors contextualize the CG alongside the histories of British retailing and consumer-oriented businesses as well as that of the cooperative movement. Additionally, they couch their analyses within the political, economic, and social conditions that influenced the cooperative movement. Their appraisal of the CG is guided by two questions: How did the cooperative business adapt to and shape British society? And how did the CG and its predecessor, the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), influence business's role in a changing society? To answer these questions, the authors engage in lively debates with previous scholarship about the CWS and the CG, offer alternative explanations, and bring the history to the present.

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 begins with the development of the cooperative model from 1780 to 1938. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the CWS expanded at home and abroad, especially in manufacturing, farming, and banking. Its range of goods required trading overseas and acquiring foreign land for the production of tea, palm oil, and cocoa. Although local cooperative members demanded these products, the authors say little about these “colonial” projects, for example, whether the laborers' wages and working conditions were compatible with cooperative principles. What the authors do clearly note is how the growth of the CWS ultimately created tensions between the national organization and local cooperative societies that wanted to maintain their autonomy.

In Part 2, the authors examine the cooperative business model from 1939 to 1973. This period was one of expansion and modernization for the CWS, as well as a lack of coordination with local cooperative societies. Further, competition with retail chains, the discontinuation of dividends to members, and costly advertising threatened the survival of local cooperatives. During this period, the CWS lost control of one of its subsidiaries, the Co-operative Retail Services (CRS), which became a powerful rival. One source of tension was the CRS's claim that it was more democratic than the CWS, a subject that the authors might have investigated further. Indeed, democracy has historically distinguished cooperatives from other business models. But what happens when a cooperative organization becomes too large, centralized, and hierarchical, as did the CWS? Might this have partly accounted for what the authors call a “dysfunctional federation” (p. 196)?

As of the 1990s, the CWS remained a conglomerate of businesses in food, travel, farming, insurance, funeral service, and banking. The authors characterize this decade as a “renaissance,” with its new leadership and cadre of managers. Following an attempted takeover in 1997, the CWS reorganized under the capable CEO Graham Melmoth. In fact, Melmoth negotiated a CWS-CRS merger, which integrated the retailing and distribution activities into a new organization: the CG. In turn, the CG restored dividends, changed its image by selling more fair-trade and healthy foods, and created eco-friendly practices, such as the use of solar panels and wind turbines. Such strategies were successful, as the CG's food retail sales more than tripled from 2000 to 2010.

The authors attribute most of this success to the CWS's and CG's national leaders. What is missing, by intention, is a consideration of the more successful local cooperative societies and their leaders, and the role they may have played in this turnaround. Since the 1960s, smaller and less successful cooperative societies had been forced to close. By 1980, there were nearly two hundred local cooperatives but the top twenty accounted for two-thirds of all cooperative sales. By 2002, the number of cooperatives had decreased to forty-two; some were regional cooperatives with robust wholesale activities. Certainly these independent cooperatives leveraged a great deal of power with the CWS, and later the CG, and helped bring about its success.

A historical reference book such as this cannot discuss every aspect of the cooperative movement. Nonetheless, social class is one subject that, I believe, deserved more attention. The authors give important consideration to the working-class membership during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—such as their household incomes, producer cooperatives, and political affiliation with the Labour Party. But a class analysis is largely absent thereafter. Did the rise in post–World War II consumerism affect the social class of members of the cooperative movement? Did working-class members leave local cooperative societies after their dividends were dropped? Was the “renaissance” of the CWS during the 1990s and early twenty-first century due, in part, to an increase in middle-class membership?

Likewise, we know little about how the age and gender of members may have influenced the cooperative movement. Women, for example, have historically been the primary buyers for their households. How did their buying patterns and involvement in their local cooperatives shape the movement? Conversely, might aging members' lack of involvement have been part of why the CWS became “a dysfunctional federation” (p. 196)? The authors might have looked at patterns in some of the larger cooperative societies to determine if they affected the CWS and CG.

Knowing more about the local cooperatives' membership would help us better understand the reasons people joined and their levels of involvement. The authors note that dividends created member loyalty, and that when cooperatives no longer offered them, membership decreased. Is that, then, the primary reason that members join cooperatives? Aren't members also drawn, as the authors claim, by cooperative values, such as democracy? If so, the term “democracy” needs further development in the book, for it is unclear how it is conceptualized.

Regardless of these small concerns, Building Co-operation is a noteworthy reference book. The authors have given us a complex and nuanced history of the United Kingdom's national cooperative movement and organizations in the last 150 years. As such, they have made an excellent contribution to cooperative scholarship.