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Lots of, uh, challenging short-term deadlines in Mondragon. Lean
production, you know. Hope to add my two cents to the discussion when
things slow down a bit at the end of the month or in August. I was just
scratching out a handful of "key" factors I think have been in play in Mondragon
in recent years and the list quickly grew to a dozen or fifteen. Reminds
me of the comment made by a Canadian who visited the co-ops a year or so
ago. She said, "Whenever we ask you a question about Mondragon, your first
response is: 'It's complicated' or 'Yes and no' or
'It depends.' "
Regards,
Fred
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 1:04 AM
Subject: Re: Mondragon: Re:
Mondragon
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
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