Employee Ownership and Health: An Initial Study

Cooperative identity as a yardstick for transformative change

“…Burdin (2014) finds that employment stability is a key factor contributing to significantly greater rate of survival of worker cooperatives compared to investor owned enterprises (see also Arando et al., 2010). Further to these findings, there is some evidence of cooperative counter‐cyclical nature suggesting they are a means to weather economic crises (Perotin, 2006), and that cooperative density results in spillover effects impacting community health (Erdal, 2014).…”

“…Among the strategies to assess adherence to the cooperative identity, cooperatives engage in the development of tools and Key Performance Indicators specific to the cooperative model (see Salathe-Beaulieu et al 2019;Brown et al, 2015;CoopsUK, 2018). There is a shared understanding that adherence to the cooperative identity results in a sustainable enterprise and communities (Herbert et al, 2016;Marino, 2015;Gordon-Nembhard, 2014Perotin, 2013;Erdal, 2014), so that cooperatives need to assess the extent to which they stay true to their principles, rather than succumb to non-congruent isomorphism. However, there is also an understanding that measures of adherence to the values and principles, while important, need to be contextualized and granulated to make a difference, posing a challenge of complexity and aggregation, shared by impact measurement projects in general.…”

“…Cooperatives are known to serve a competitive yardstick role when they address market failure (Nourse, 1992, as cited in Hogeland, 2007; Cook, 1995; Milford, 2004; Novkovic, 2008; Erdal, 2014). With depressed prices for agricultural commodities under monopsony, for example, cooperative organizing provides a higher price for farmer‐members’ supplies, pushing the market price toward a competitive level at the same time.…”

“…Debates about this vision for a cooperative economy are evident in academia (Zamagni & Zamagni, 2010; Spear, 2011; Novkovic, 2018; Miner & Novkovic, 2019) but also in practice, particularly among cooperatives in diverse industries, and with different reasons for entry. Arguments in favor of indicators that align cooperative strategies with the Statement on the Cooperative Identity abound (Herbert et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2015, Novkovic & Gordon‐Nembhard, 2017; Novkovic, 2020), as does the evidence of their contributions to a sustainable society when they do (Herbert et al., 2016; Erdal, 2014; Gordon‐Nembhard, 2015; Perotin, 2013). Sustainability indicators seem appropriate for cooperative enterprises looking to transform the purpose of economic activity, and therefore create social impact (Erdal, 2014; Novkovic and Gordon Nembhard, 2017), but a deeper understanding of a vision for a cooperative economy may be in order before we can elaborate on the types of sustainability indicators that can be informed by it.…”

The Emergence of the Empresas Recuperadas Por Sus Trabajadores: A Political Economic and Sociological Appraisal of Two Decades of Self-Management in Argentina

“…As I will argue in Part 3, such is also the case with ERTs. Worker coops also exhibit "positive externalities" for communities; economic democracy has been linked to workers' improved wellbeing (Theorell, 2003;Wilkinson & Pickett, 2011), and they promote participation beyond the workplace as worker members learn citizenship by "doing" democracy (Daly, Schugurensky, & Lopes, 2008;Erdal, 2000Erdal, , 2011Pateman, 1970). Again, ERTs have been showing ample evidence of its worker-members' growing awareness of community needs and their increased involvement in community participation, as I have shown elsewhere (Vieta, Larrabure, & Schugurensky, 2011;Vieta, 2014a).…”