Making Mondragón

Making Mondragón
Author: William Foote Whyte
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801471729

Since its founding in 1956 in Spain's Basque region, the Mondragón Corporation has been a touchstone for the international cooperative movement. Its nearly three hundred companies and organizations span areas from finance to education. In its industrial sector Mondragón has had a rich experience over many years in manufacturing products as varied as furniture, kitchen equipment, machine tools, and electronic components and in printing, shipbuilding, and metal smelting. Making Mondragón is a groundbreaking look at the history of worker ownership in the Spanish cooperative. First published in 1988, it remains the best source for those looking to glean a rich body of ideas for potential adaptation and implementation elsewhere from Mondragón's long and varied experience. This second edition, published in 1991, takes into account the major structural and strategic changes that were being implemented in 1990 to allow the enterprise to compete successfully in the European common market. Mondragón has created social inventions and developed social structures and social processes that have enabled it to overcome some of the major obstacles faced by other worker cooperatives in the past. William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King Whyte describe the creation and evolution of the Mondragón cooperatives, how they have changed through decades of experience, and how they have struggled to maintain a balance between their social commitments and economic realities. The lessons of Mondragón apply most clearly to worker cooperatives and other employee-owned firms, but also extend to regional development and stimulating and supporting entrepreneurship, whatever the form of ownership.

The Myth of Mondragon

The Myth of Mondragon
Author: Sharryn Kasmir
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780791430033

This is the first critical account of the internationally renowned Mondragon cooperatives of the Basque region of Spain. The Mondragon cooperatives are seen as the leading alternative model to standard industrial organization; they are considered to be the most successful example of democratic decision making and worker ownership. However, the author argues that the vast scholarly and popular literature on Mondragon idealizes the cooperatives by falsely portraying them as apolitical institutions and by ignoring the experiences of shop floor workers. She shows how this creation of an idealized image of the cooperatives is part of a new global ideology that promotes cooperative labor-management relations in order to discredit labor unions and working-class organizations; this constitutes what she calls the "myth" of Mondragon.

Integral Development

Integral Development
Author: Professor Ronnie Lessem
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2014-05-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1409423530

Schieffer and Lessem introduce a groundbreaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. Integral Development combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to overcome these imbalances and to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant development experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society.

The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level

The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level
Author: Stefan Berger
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 647
Release: 2019-01-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137481927

Comprising the study, documentation, and comparison of plant-level workers’ participation around the world, this volume meets the challenge of offering a global perspective on workers’ participation, representation, and models of social partnership. Value chains, economic life, inter-cultural exchange and knowledge, as well as the mobility of persons and ideas increasingly cross the borders of nation-states. In the knowledge age, the active participation of workers in organizations is crucially important for sustainable and long-term growth and innovation. This handbook offers lessons from historical, global accounts of workers’ participation at plant level, even as it looks forward to predict forthcoming trends in participation.

Making Mondragón

Making Mondragón
Author: William Foote Whyte
Publisher:
Total Pages: 333
Release: 1991
Genre: Industrial relations
ISBN: 9780875461373

Learning from the Field

Learning from the Field
Author: William Foote Whyte
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1984-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780803933187

"Other field researchers, who usually convey their craft only through one-on-one apprenticeships, should follow Whyte's lead and try to create their own vicarious apprenticeships through candid backstage accounts of their judgment calls in the field. . . . This book gives seasoned investigators an excuse to rethink what they take for granted and to see, step-by-step, how their practice compares with that of another seasoned person. Most people will welcome the chance to do this because of a final characteristic in this book, its even-handed tone." --Journal of Contemporary Ethnography "Useful for a better understanding of the character and promise of ethnographic research." --Journal of Communication "Goes beyond statements of principles to give a realistic picture of problems encountered by the field researcher." --Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique A highly regarded field researcher tells how he has plied his craft for the past 50 years. William Foote Whyte, in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen, describes the successes--and failures--he has had in studying street corner society in Boston, oil companies in Oklahoma and Venezuela, restaurants in Chicago, worker cooperatives in Spain, factories in New York State, and villages in Peru. With the goal of taking readers into the field with him, Whyte discusses and dissects his chief tools--participant observation and the semistructured interview. He also explains how to evaluate and analyze field data, why the use of local history in social research is valuable, and the ethics of fieldwork. Whyte focuses on four general problems that have plagued his career as a researcher:

Humanizing the Economy

Humanizing the Economy
Author: John Restakis
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 086571651X

How the largest social movement in history is making the world a better place.

Museum Matters

Museum Matters
Author: Miruna Achim
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 081653957X

Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

CGI

CGI
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2001
Genre: Corporate governance
ISBN:

Worker Cooperatives and Revolution

Worker Cooperatives and Revolution
Author: Chris Wright
Publisher: Booklocker
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2014-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1632634325

Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the global popular protests of 2011, more people have begun to wonder and speculate: what’s next for civilization? The economic, social, and political status quo seems unsustainable, but what can emerge to take its place? In this book, a historian examines the past and present to argue that the seeds of a more humane society are already being planted, on local and international scales. Whether they will bear fruit depends, ultimately, on grassroots initiative. Focusing on the new worker cooperative movement in the West, this study not only contains the first systematic discussion of the solidarity economy in the light of Marxist theory; it also introduces a major revision of Marxism that both updates it for the twenty-first century and illuminates our historical moment. It includes an analysis of the history of cooperatives in the U.S., showing where they went wrong and how we can correct their past mistakes. It has a case-study of the successful new worker-owned business New Era Windows in Chicago, which has been celebrated internationally for its defiance of conventional paradigms. And it shows a way out of the age-old conflict between Marxism and anarchism, arguing that both are more relevant now than they have ever been. Which is to say: a gradualist “revolution” is, for the first time, within the realm of possibility.