Re: Mondragon: Re: Mondragon

[Hsq95@aol.com]

Race -

I believe that through past correspondence you have acknowledged an acquaintance with my partner Fred Freundlich who teaches on the faculty of Mondragon University.  He and his colleague Luxio Ugarte have a long standing theoretical and practical interest in the democratization issues you describe as they are being played out in Mondragon.  Those questions are also a major focus of our work here at Ownership Associates in ESOP and cooperative companies that are our clients.

If you aren't in touch with Fred and Luxio on these topics, you may want to consider doing so (ff@ownershipassociates.com).  You can see for yourself if our work at Ownership Associates has anything to contribute to these questions.  My partner Loren Rodgers who takes the lead on our Ownership Culture Survey (OCS) work and other responsibilities is nearly finished with a re-tooling of our web page that will provide easier access to people who wish to make use of our work.  This note will hopefully spur him on to get the revised web page done in the coming week.  

Loren will be presenting on some of that work at the Eastern States Worker Cooperative Conference along with Tim Huet and others July 10-21 at the University of Maryland.  I will unfortunately be tied up at a competing conference in Philadelphia most of that weekend on behalf of the Mondragon inspired Sweat X project.  I may be in there that Friday night.  Are you planning to attend?

Finally, in my opinion Tim Huet and his colleagues in the Bay area have gone further than anyone else in this country in digging in to the details of how to make Mondragon style cooperative structures work.  As far as the gray hairs go though David Ellerman, Robert Oakeshott and probably yourself still set the standard.

Chris Mackin
www.ownershipassociates.com