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Re: Mondragon: Fwd: New ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives
Title: Re: Mondragon: Fwd: New ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives
on 13/9/02 12:59 am, RaceM at race@netspace.net.au wrote:
on 10/9/02 1:39 am, RaceM at race@netspace.net.au wrote:
>> on 8/9/02 5:49 am, RaceM at race@netspace.net.au wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Dear Robert
>>>
>>> Thanks for your message, and for your appreciative comments about
>>> 'Jobs of Our Own'. As to 'Rerum Novarum', I had always until I wrote
>>> the book called the encyclical just that, but in the course of the
>>> research I came across 'De Rerum Novarum' in what I took to be an
>>> authoritative source, and adopted it as translating to 'Of New
>>> Things'. Which shows among other things that a distant recollection
>>> of schooldays Latin is a dangerous thing. I haven't commented on your
>>> 'Jobs and Fairness' because I haven't yet had the opportunity to read
>>> it properly - the Parliamentary Library here came up with a copy on
>>> inter-library loan, but it had to be returned before I had had time
>>> to do any more than a first skim through, so I've now ordered it from
>>> my local bookseller who tells me that I have a few more weeks still
>>> to wait. One section that interested me greatly was the end game in
>>> regard to the National Freight Corporation - I'd read Peter
>>> Thompson's account in his memoirs some years ago and frequently
>>> referred to it in speeches, but never got round to finding out what
>>> had been the final washup. Meanwhile, I still don't know whether I
>>> will be able to make Bilbao, less for financial reasons than that I
>>> have recently taken on a fairly substantial short term consultancy on
>>> early childhood education and care for a government deparyment, that
>>> has to be completed by Christmas, so getting to the conference will
>>> depend on how the work is progressing. Best wishes, Race Mathews
>> dear race, thanks for both your e-mails. I shall certainly make a point of
>> visiting the GKC institute at Orange in New Jersey when I am next in
>> America. About the employee ownership end-game at NFC, I suppose the key
>> fact is that "a significant majority of NFC's employee shareholders, some
>> 60%, voted in 1988 to authorise the directors to seek a flotation". Of
>> course, that isn't the VERY end of the story; and Sir Peter was rightly
>> incensed by what he saw as the subsequent betrayal - after his retirement -
>> by the successor top management of the "rank and file " employee
>> shareholders. That is all dealt with fairly fully in my book. Incidently I
>> had originally intended in my comments about Jobs of Our Own to bring up the
>> comparison (p226) between behaviour in Japanese and Mondragon businesses. Do
>> you know Ronald Dore's TAKING JAPAN SERIOUSLY with its striking sub-title- A
>> CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LEADING ECONOMIC ISSUES. If not I can only
>> recommend it most strongly. He introduces most persuasively a distinction
>> between the COMPANY LAW MODEL of capitalist businesses and the Community
>> Model and argues that DE FACTO even if not DE JURE the latter is what you
>> find in Japan. For what it's worth I reviewed the book at some length in the
>> April-June 1988 issue of Political Quarterly, to which you may have
>> relatively easy access....I shall keep my fingers crossed and hope that your
>> other commitments will allow you to make the journey to Mondragon and Bilbao
>> in late Novemenber - and to stop off here either on the way or the way back.
>> I have two spare rooms so there would be no difficulty about the offer of a
>> bed. With renewed thanks and all the best from robert.
>
> Dear Robert
>
> Thanks for your message, and I'll get the library to look out a copy
> of the 'Political Quarterly' article for me. Meanwhile, I'd like to
> think that, irrespective of whether I make it to Bilbao, the
> conference might consider putting formally to the MCC a proposal for
> jointly resuming the action research that was initiated by the
> Greenwood/Gonzalez team at Fagor in the late 1980s. It seems to me
> that no single issue is more important for the future of the MCC as a
> co-operative entity, and for the 'evolved distributism' to which it
> so eloquently gives expression, than to get to the bottom of the
> shopfloor disaffection that the Greenwood and Gonzalez research
> identified - and that apparently also shows up in more recent survey
> data - and develop an agreed program of remedial measures. In my
> view, the task is in no sense insuperable, providing that it draws on
> the best sources of industrial relations and industrial democracy
> insight, information and guidance, irrespective of where they are to
> be found,and does not try to operate on a wholly in-houses basis, as
> would be understandable in the light of the success of the
> co-operatives in fending for themselves in so many other spheres.I
> also wonder whether - in the light of your long association with
> Mondragon and the wide range of cases you have covered in 'Jobs and
> Fairness'- you might not be admirably qualified - either alone or
> perhaps in association with others such as, say, Jeff Gates - to
> steer such a project to external sources of advice that would be both
> effective and congenial for the co-operatives? And might not a
> measure at least of funding be accessible from Brussels or the ILO?
> Not least, it seems to me that getting off the ground such a program
> with an appropriate sense of urgency would in itself make the
> conference worthwhile, irrespective of the whatever other positive
> outcomes may be achieved. It would not be the MCC co-operatives alone
> that benefited, but all those of us who wish them well and would
> like to see their lessons put to work in our own countries. I'd hoped
> originally that something similar might be triggered from discussion
> on the Mondragon page of the COG web site, but on indications to date
> it isn't going to happen, and an entity with clout and credibility is
> required. Best wishes, Race Mathews.
dear race, this is an overdue response to your latest email. Rather
unusually I have been out of London for the past two days. In principle I
greatly favour your "action research" proposal: for a thoroughly
professional investigation into the causes of management/shopfloor
discontents within MCC and the resulting indentification of a set of changed
policies to confront them. I might also be able to point to a candidate who
could do a good job. For what it's worth Ron Dore would probably be my
preferred researcher. I failed to pass on when I flagged him up in my last
e-mail what has always seemed to me his most persuasive contrast between how
western and japanes managements are perceived by the "lads". The latter are
seen as the "trusted elders of a working community" the former as "the paid
agents of the shareholders". And if the project was really going to come
off- and the sponsors wanted a competition to get the job - I could almost
certainly suggest some other names. But I also have two initial caveats: a)
if the proposal is to be considered by the conference I would favour seeking
to establish in advance what MCC reaction was likely to be and b) getting an
advance reaction from Mark Mathieu. Friendly Fred might be prepared to act
as an intemediary in the first case. You are, I'm sure, the best agent in
the second. Well, that's about it for now. But one final query. Have you an
address and other contact details for John Thomson, preferably here in the
UK but also useful to me if he is elsewhere. With best wishes from Robert.
Dear Robert
Thanks for your message. I'm intensely interested in your insight about contrasts between western and japanese perceptions of management at the shopfloor level - between the 'paid agents of the shareholders' and 'trusted elders of a working community' paradigms - being relevant to the disaffection among some members of some Mondragon co-operatives that Greenwood and Gonzalez and subsequent researchers have identified, and immensely encouraged that you share my sense of urgency about the need for an international study to nail down the precise nature of the problem and come up with concrete, hands-on remedies that are compatible with the culture of the co-operatives and congenial to them. Clearly you are right about the essential pre-requisites including a strong sense of ownership of the project by the co-operatives, and also the availability of a strong auspicing body such as Marc Mathieu and the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership - in conjunction perhaps with the European Confederation of Workers' Co-operatives and Participative Enterprises? - might well be able to provide. On the face of the matter, the Bilbao conference would be an ideal starting point, bringing face to face as I imagine it will members of the co-operatives with numbers of their external well-wishers who are in a position either to contribute to a planning process or participate personally in an agreed research project. And I wonder if, in you chairing of the conference, and having had the enviable privilege of actually talking with Arizmediarrieta, you might not feel his approving presence - not to mention also the presence of Jimmy Tomkins and Moses Coady and the founder distributists before them - behind you on the dais, in the event that discussion of the project turns out to eventuate? Be that as it may, while it may well be that both Marc and Fred Freundlich are followng our exchanges of messages, I will copy this one to them individually, in the hope that that they may have some guidance for us as to how best to proceed. Finally, on a more down-to-earth note, perhaps you could say some more about Robert Dore and his work, in part as an indication of the attributes and skills you feel the project would require. Best wishes, Race Mathews
dear race, ron dore has one of the best minds of all the sociologists I know. You can find an impressive list of all or most of what he has published in the latest edition of Who's Who. I first came across him in the 1970s when he was working at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex. Later, probably in the late 1970s, I read his Japanese Factory/English Factory. Later still in the 1990s I persuaded him to become a trustee of Partnership Research Ltd, the charitable counterpart of Job Ownership Ltd, at which commisioning the research and publication of individual case studies was the main activity. Versions of many of these later provided well over half of the material brought together in Jobs and Fairness. The feeling round the table was that if work was subject to Ron Dore's scrutiny and managed to survive then it must meet acceptable research standards. Later again, I wrote that review of two of his more recent books about Japanese business of which you already have the reference. I can't think of anyone better qualified by a combination of his knowledge of this specialist field and his outstanding intellectual gifts to head up the research you have in mind. Inidentally once you have achieved access to a copy of Jobs and Fairness, you might usefully in this context look at the successive case studies of the two Italian industrial Co-ops located at Imola, not far to the south east of Bologna: La Ceramica and Sacmi. They exhibit a number of contrasts. Perhaps the most important one is that in the former the top managers are as it were guns hired in from the private sector who are not allowed to become co-op members. In Sacmi by contrast the top managers are permitted to become co-op members and nomally do so. Both businesses have been stunningly successful for the last dozen years or so. But there is a big difference between the character of their respective work forces: at La Ceramica the majority have low levels of skill. At Sacmi the reverse is true. For what it's worth I don't myself believe that there is a single "best model" if you are talking about the relationships in a co-operative type business between the top decision making body, the management, the "rank and file" employees, and the trade unions, if any. To modify existing arrangements in Europe's co-ops in the direction of more nearly confucian values might well be a rather taxing task and the likely outcome problematic. On the other hand I rather doubt whether specifically institutional adjustment, even if substantial - as in the case of your own tentative suggestion of "designer unions" for Mondragon - would do the trick . By changing the existing equilibrium it might even produce change for the worse. I often find that I need to remind myself of Bernard Miller's observation, made from the vantage point of an ex-chairman of John Lewis, that the partnership's leadership were probably entitled to think of themselves as doing rather well. if as many as one third of the rank and file partners felt and behaved as if they were really committed to the set-up. I hope these reflections may help though I quite see that they may not be! All the best from Robert O.
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