The Decline of the Mondragon Cooperatives

Abstract

The Mondragon producers cooperatives in Basque Spain represent the classic case of alternative industrial organisation. While the cooperatives received a great deal of scholarly attention during the 1970s and 1980s, relatively little has been published on recent developments at Mondragon. It is time to update the Mondragon story. In 1991, 100 cooperatives joined to become the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. This super‐structure has permitted an important degree of centralised control over member cooperatives. Yet, it has also been the source of substantial challenges, both structural and ideological, to this alternative form of industrial organisation. We appear to be witnessing the cooperatives' decline, the end of a great experiment in favour of just another capitalist enterprise. This story is important both for cooperativism in Mondragon itself and for scholars and practitioners worldwide who find in Mondragon proof than an alternative, less exploitative approach to industrial organisation is possible.

Depleted communities and community business entrepreneurship: revaluing space through place

“…In recent years there has been an increasing amount of criticism of Mondragon (Kasmir 1996, Kohler 1996, Harding 1998, Cheney 2000. This criticism comes as a response to a previously over-romanticized interpretation of Mondragon (Gilman 1983, Mollner 1984, Hoover 1992 and to a restructuring of the Mondragon co-operatives in 1991.…”

“…This criticism comes as a response to a previously over-romanticized interpretation of Mondragon (Gilman 1983, Mollner 1984, Hoover 1992 and to a restructuring of the Mondragon co-operatives in 1991. The critics challenge the Utopian image of Mondragon from the point of view of the workers (Kasmir 1996), and raise issues where Mondragon's co-operative nature and social vision is seen to be slipping (Harding 1998, Cheney 2000.…”