The interest in greater workers’ control of industry through co-operative enterprises has been fuelled by the extraordinary success of the Mondragon group of worker co-operatives in the Basque provinces of Spain. Efforts have consequently been made to...
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The interest in greater workers’ control of industry through co-operative enterprises has been fuelled by the extraordinary success of the Mondragon group of worker co-operatives in the Basque provinces of Spain. Efforts have consequently been made to replicate the Mondragon-style worker co-operatives in most western industrialized countries. This extraordinary success has been attributed to the worker co-operative model’s ability to promote and nurture social capital and asset-based capacities. This paper therefore examines how the worker co-operative model promotes and nurtures social capital and asset-based capacities. The study analyzes the nature of a worker co-operative as an organization model in search of credence to the assertion that these enterprises are inherently social-capital type organizations. The study concludes that a worker co-operative represents one of the best forms of a social-capital type enterprise. As membership based organizations, worker co-operatives’ main
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