In this essay, the focus is on considering the way legal forms for co-operative enterprise are designed to meet the needs of members. In developing a critique of the investor-led firm that dominates discourse on business, I will critically evaluate the role of legal membership in establishing a co-operative enterprise and consider how an organisation's legal form can support the development of a co-operative identity. ¹ The purpose is to distinguish conceptually between common ownership, joint ownership and co-ownership by comparing and contrasting model rules that have developed over the past 20 years, and their likely influence on future co-operative development.

I will argue that the mediation of business purpose and social identity influences the choice and development of an organisation's legal form. As the choice of legal form influences the power and wealth sharing arrangements of a co-operative enterprise, it is not a minor matter (particularly over the longer-term). Furthermore, the emergence of social enterprise has created a range of challenges to co-operative thinking based on common ownership by a single stakeholder group, with the result that hybrid models have developed to express co-operative values and principles in new ways. ²