| |
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Mondragon: Re: Mondragon
Title: Re: Mondragon: Re: Mondragon
Dear Race,
Luther is a tough act to follow.
Though I also read recently that the population of Germany declined by
one-third during the politico-religious fighting of the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation, so maybe I ought to avoid Luther's act
altogether. ... In any case, a big part of the problem here is
simply that not enough people speak (let alone write) enough English
to participate. Time demands are another problem. We'll
see.
Regards,
Fred
----- Original Message -----
From: RaceM
To: mondragon@cog.kent.edu
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: Mondragon: Re: Mondragon
Dear Race, Chris and mondragon@cog:
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 -----
From: Hsq95@aol.com
To: mondragon@cog.kent.edu
Cc: lr@ownershipassociates.com ; ff@ownershipassociates.com
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
Dear Fred
Thanks for your message. I'll look forward to your
Luther-like nailing up on the Portalon of your fifteen or so
propositions of Mondragonian ambiguity in August or sooner. Meanwhile,
as you will see from my reponses to Chris Macken and Shann Turnbull,
one aspect of the mission of COG's Mondragon page seems to me to be to
encourage as many industrial relations, human resource management and
industrial democracy scholars and practitioners as possible to apply
their minds to the question of how the excellence of corporate
governance in the Mondragon mould can be replicated at the shopfloor
level, and it is very much my hope that people on the COHG page list
who know of prospective sources of advice will alert them to the
discussion. Correspondingly, there is a need for respondents within
the co-operatives and I wonder if you have any views as to how the
interest of prospective candidates can be engaged? Best wishes,
Race
--
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.
Dear Fred
Thanks for your message - your reference to the precipitous
decline in Germany's' population in the troubles following Luther and
the Reformation reminded me of a passage from Barbara Tuchman's
eloquent introduction to her 'A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th
Century' that I have recently re-visited: 'When the gap between the
ideal and the real becomes too wide, the system breaks down. Legend
and story have always reflected this; in the Arthurian romances the
Round Table is shattered from within. The sword is returned the lake;
the effort begins anew. Violent, greedy, fallible as he may be, man
retains his vision of order and resumes his march'.A tract for our
times - and a compelling vindication for the view that Mondragon - be
its shortcomings as they may - should be seen as a rare
lighthouse of hope in a darkening world and cherished and assisted
accordingly? 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.
|