Mondragon

Thank you for raising what has already developed into a productive discussion of the concept of ownership. While I attracted by the arguments of you and others who favour the development of the sort of taxonomy of the term that would throw further light on - among other things - the issue of the relationship between ESOP entities and Mondragon-style worker co-operatives on which I have touched in a response to Mark Mathieu, I also agree with you and Dan that the significance of your project is so far-reaching as to require the establishment of the "typology" list that Dan has now offered. It would then be possible for whatever is finalised within that list to feedback, not only into the International Mondragon Studies Association (IMSA) discussion, but also into the other COG groups to whose work it is so plainly relevant.

Meanwhile, I wonder whether there would be common ground within the present list to the effect that a high prority should be assigned to the unfinished business left over from the Greenwood and Gonzalez attitudinal studies at Fagor in the late 1980s and the subsequent research by Otalora's Office of Sociological; Studies. It seems to me that getting to the bottom to the disaffection within some co-operatives that the research identifies and determining whether and if so how it can be remedied is a - perhaps "the" - key challenge confronting the co-operatives,not least because it bears directly on their ability to retain important elements of their competitive advantage and thereby fulfil other objectives such as the creation of new jobs within the Basque region. Is the disaffection intrinsic to ineradicable contradictions between the "evolved distributism" of the co-operatives and the capitalist social order in which they operate as I understand some including - for example - Sharyn Kasmir to suggest, or is it as others suppose a failing consequent on the co-operatives having been distracted by their economic difficulties through the 1980s and into the early 1990s from giving the same attention to the development of industrial democracy at the shopfloor level as in the sphere of corporate governance, and thereby open to pragmatic remedy? If the latter, is it possible to document by what means and with what outcomes the issues is being addressed currently, both within individual co-operatives and co-operative groups such as Fagor, where the Greenwood and Gonzalez studies were conducted, and by the MCC? If so, what can be offered by way of feedback to those within the co-operatives who have the carriage of these measures, in the light of reflection and experience in other countries and cultures? How can it be ensured that developments in industrial democracy within Mondragon both inform and and are informed by those elsewhere? I am haunted as I believe must be we all by the question which Belloc raises in the passage with which I concluded the list paper:

Re: Mondragon: Mondragon papers