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Re: Mondragon: Fwd: New ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives
Race
In regards to your comment below of Mondragon spining off
"offspring" firms when they employed around 300, you may be
interested in the findings of evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar quoted
below. I thought the number was 500 not 300? Can anybody
confirm the change and/or the number please?
Dunbar (1993: 685) reports that the
capacity of the human neocortex limits the maximum number of people an
individual can establish social bonds and trust with to around 150.
He also reported research which suggested that 500 people represents a
“critical threshold beyond which social cohesion can be maintained only
if there is an appropriate number of authoritarian officials” (Dunbar,
1993: 687). These findings provide another reason why firms have
diminishing return to scale in addition to the three identified by Coase
(1937).
References:
Dunbar, R.I.M. 1993, ‘Coevolution of
neocortical size, group size and language in humans’, Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 16, 681-735.
Coase, R.H. 1937, 'The nature of the firm', Economica, 4, 386-405,
reproduced by eds J.B. Barney & W.G. Ouchi, 1986, 80-98.
The quote above is taken from my academic paper, ‘A New Way to
Govern’,
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=310263>.
A non academic public policy version for politicians and "think
tanks" was published in hard copy by the New Economics Foundation in
London last week. This version can be downloaded from links to
<http://www.neweconomics.org/default.asp?strRequest=newsarchive&strNewsRequest=newsitem&intNewsID=198>
but it does not contain the quote!
A New Way to Govern: Organisations and society after Enron is
heavily supported by the Mondragon experience to illustrate how Mondragon
provides important lessons for main line businesses.
Kind regards
Shann
At 11:41 AM 15/7/2002, you wrote:
Mark
Levin
ILO
Dear Mark:
Congratulations to you and your colleagues for getting this important
motion on cooperatives passed at the ILO. I know your name from my
colleague David Ellerman at the World Bank.
You may have heard of a recent unionized cooperative model that may be of
interest to your ILO colleagues. Team X, Inc. is a UNITE! organized
worker cooperative that produces Sweat X brand apparel out of a
new factory in Los Angeles. Team X was launched in early 2002 and
is successfully operating in the marketplace.
The Team X effort - described on the web at
www.sweatx.coop -
has been funded by a new social venture capital fund run by Ben Cohen and
Pierre Ferrari. Ben Cohen is the former owner of Ben & Jerry's
Ice Cream here in the United States. The social venture capital
fund Ben, Pierre and others have started aims to pay a "living
wage" at all its target investment firms and is partial to
Mondragon-inspired industrial cooperatives. I am glad to report
that unions are also a welcome part of the Hot Fudge/Team X / Sweat X
model and that UNITE! has been an enthusiastic partner in this effort to
build a model firm that can prove that the apparel industry need not
operate under sweatshop conditions.
My firm (Ownership Associates, Inc. www.ownershipassociates.com) with
early help from David Ellerman, Jeff Gates and the law firm of Dorsey
& Whitney has played the lead role in helping to structure and
organize Team X. We play a continuing role helping with internal
organizational and educational challenges, with external public relations
efforts and in helping to place Sweat X brand apparel in universities,
with unions, faith based organizations and with the entertainment
industry.
The labor connection is crucial here. In addition to my work at
Ownership Associates, I serve as a member of the core faculty of the
Harvard Trade Union Program teaching on the general topic of Capital
Strategies for Labor. Richard Freeman is the faculty co-chair of
the Harvard Trade Union Program. He and colleagues at UCLA are
producing case study material on Team X Sweat X that should prove useful
to the broader labor community.
Finally, on an international note, one of the mid term plans for the Hot
Fudge Team X Sweat X group is to replicate our effort in Mexico or
Central America. Please let me know if you would like any further
information on this project. You can write me here or preferably at
cm@ownershipassociates.com
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Mackin
Ownership Associates, Inc. (a worker cooperative)
6 University Road
Cambridge, MA 02138
T. 617-868-4600
F. 617-868-7969
www.ownershipassociates.com
Dear Chris
It was great news, in your message to Mark Levin, that your SweatX
project is flourishing, and also that there are plans for replicating it
in Mexico or Central America. Are you yet able to share any preliminary
observations about the level of participation that is being achieved at
the shopfloor level, and ways in which it can be maintained and enhanced
once the formative phase is over? And - remote as the issue may seem at
this stage - have you developed any views about the optimum size of
businesses that are derived in some sense from the Mondragon model,
particularly in the light of Arizmendiarrieta's conclusion following the
1974 Ulgor strike, that at the point where the membership of a
co-operative reached around 300 it should spin off a daughter
co-operative? Is it possible in this respect that aspects of what you are
undertaking could be instructive for Mondragon in its currently
re-energised pursuit of shopfloor inclusion, participation and
democratisation? Might not there be an opportunity here to establish a
precedent for a mutually advantageous exchange of information with
Mondragon, through, say, a regular swapping of notes with entities such
as the Saiolan business incubator or the LKS management consultancy
co-operatives, or perhaps less ambitiously with individuals within
them? In short, how can a genuine dialogue with Mondragon be
substituted for what at present is more in the nature of serial
monologues - how can channels be established for giving back to Mondragon
at least some fraction of what is gained from its example? Many thanks,
and all good 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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