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Re: Mondragon: Mondragon papers
Race
I thought it might be better to divert the typology discussion to the
"Ownership" group so as not to distract your work and perhaps
lively up the other discussion group again. The introduction page
of this group refers to a discussion on typology as I suggested at our
strategy meeting.
I have just made some introductory comments for developing a typology
which can be accessed through the COG archives at
http://cog.kent.edu/archives/ownership/msg02479.html
Regards
Shann
At 07:22 AM 7/4/2002, you wrote:
Dear
Shann,
I agree completely. Depending on what the beholder understands as
as ownership, the term covers a broad spectrum which falls short
of meeting the needs of people who want to develop policy around
governance, financial participation and residual claims and other
possible characteristics often associated with the word
ownership.
A typology, as you propose, would allow us to add a modifier before
the word ownership to distinguish several possibilities from one
another.
My guess is that there are several forms that would emerge from the
typology which would be worth the attention of public policy to get
into the hands of employees and other stakeholders. There would
also
be several forms which would not deserve this.
In fact, the ability to grade different types of ownership, would
allow
policymakers to create a spectrum of incentives which correspond to
a spectrum of ownership types, from less meaningful to most
meaningful,
and which increase in value.
For example, with ESOPs, retiring owners must sell at least 30% of
the company to the ESOP before benefiting from the ability to defer
indefinitely payment of capital gains tax. It used to be that banks
could only take a tax deduction on interest earned from loans to
ESOPs with pass-through voting rights for participants.
I guess the issue before Race, as our moderator, and the other
participants
on the Mondragon list is: Is a discussion of typology something
that
will enhance the focus of this group, or will it side-track this
group and thus would it be better to spin it off to a
"typology" list?
It would not be difficult for me to set up a typology@cog.kent.edu
list if requested.
Dan
--
Dan Bell
International Program Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-0333 << Direct number!
(330) 672-3028 general office number
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/
http://cog.kent.edu
Dear Shann
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:
- The task is impossible unless there is still left in the mass of men
a sufficient desire for economic independence to urge them towards its
attainment. You can give political independence by a stroke of a pen,
you can declare slaves to be free or give the vote to men who hitherto
have had no vote; but you cannot give property to men or families as a
permanent possession unless they desire economic freedom sufficiently to
undertake its burdens.
Is there an answer to Belloc's question? Does Mondragon
have the remedy? If so, how can the most be made of it? Best
wishes, Race
Mathews
--
Dr Race Mathews,
Senior Research Fellow,
Government and Governance Unit,
Faculty of Business and Economics
Monash University.
Postal Address:
123 Alexandra Avenue,
South Yarra, Vic, 3141,
Australia.
Phone/Fax: (03) 9826 0104.
Shann Turnbull Ph.D.
P.O. Box 266 Woollahra, Sydney, Australia, 1350
Ph: +612 9328 7466 office; +612 9327 8487 home; Fax: +612 9327 1497;
Life long E-mail: sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu
Alternate:sturnbull@optusnet.com.au
with other papers & book at
http://cog.kent.edu/library.html
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