Labor Managed Firms

This chapter reviews empirical and theoretical studies on how democratic participation at work relates to broader civic life, with a focus on democratically organized and participatory workplaces such as worker cooperatives. Here we address an implicit assumption of the spillover thesis: that there is an educative element to participatory workplaces, such as worker cooperatives, for civic life. Throughout, we critically interrogate this assumption and contemplate how and to what degree, according to the extant literature, the specifically educative dimensions of participatory, democratic, and self‑managed workplaces relate to and impact engagement in the wider polity, and vice versa.

Vieta, M., Cheney, G., Noyes, M., & Do, E. (2024). Revisiting the ‘spillover thesis’ in participatory workplaces and worker cooperatives. In J. Warren, J. Hübner, L. Biggiero, & K. Ogunyemi (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of cooperative economics and management (pp. 272-291). London: Routledge.

In this work we present the results of a recent survey that covered the whole universe of Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay. In order to be able to evaluate the comparative performance of Worker Cooperatives the survey covered also a control group of conventional firms with similar size and sector composition. In line with previous empirical research and theoretical literature, we report significant differences between the two groups of firms in several aspects of economic behavior. Cooperatives in Uruguay exhibit lower variation in wage and employment levels over time and lower dispersion of wages among workers of the same firm. They have a lower proportion of workers performing supervision tasks, lower investment rates and are less capitalintensive than the control group. Within the cooperative universe, lower investment rates and capital intensity are positively related with worker-owners being older and with the inexistence of membership markets, or more generally, of any form of individually specified property rights. On the other hand, we report no relevant differences in innovation activities and propensity to cooperate with other firms. These results are discussed in the context of the existent theoretical and empirical literature about the relative economic performance of Worker Cooperatives.

Face à un contexte entrepreneurial de plus en plus risqué et incertain, marqué notamment par la menace de faillites (cessation de paiements) ou de fermetures (absence de repreneur suite au départ en retraite du dirigeant), la transformation coopérative, c'est-à-dire la création d'une Société coopérative et participative (Scop) via la transmission ou la reprise d'une entreprise « classique », semble être une stratégie récoltant les faveurs d'un nombre d'acteurs toujours plus important (Jaumier, 2016 ; Bargues et al., 2017).

This paper is motivated by empirical observations on popular-economy firms (PEFs) in the informal sector of Santiago de Chile. These are labor-managed firms embedded in popular milieu where cooperation between their members plays a central role. This paper develops a (partial equilibrium) microeconomic theory of PEFs. First, it endogeneizes the level of cooperation between the workers. Second, it develops a static and a dynamic model to analyze whether embeddedness influences the behavior of the PEF. Embeddedness is assumed to be captured by three different characteristics suggested by the empirical observations. Most of them influence the employment and income levels in the PEF.

Literature on non-traditional firms has focused on behavioral differences with for-profit firms. Less attention has been given to the variations in behavior among non-traditional firms. This paper examines differences across three types of Uruguayan non-profit health care organizations. This paper draws on a unique dataset of Uruguayan health care organizations during the period 1982-1990, as well as interviews with doctors working in the three types of nonprofits during Spring 2010. We use a simple OLS regression to identify differences in average behavior, and differences in reaction to a regulatory change. The paper shows that structure of stake holding and governance significantly affect behavior, even where many behaviors are highly regulated. These findings highlight the importance of specifying governance structure when predicting behavior of nontraditional firms. Empirical tests of behavioral differences between traditional and non-traditional firms will be more meaningful if the governance structure of non-traditional firms is common and specified. A limitation of our study is our inability to control for the timing of degeneration of producer cooperatives. This would be one element of governance structure to consider in future data collection. These findings highlight the need to avoid drawing broad policy conclusions from the behavior of a specific subset of non-traditional firms. This paper highlights the importance of carefully specifying stakeholder and governance structure when predicting behavior of non-traditional firms. It is of interest to anyone using a sample of non-traditional firms to test general hypotheses about their behavior.

Workers in cooperatives are self-employed workers and, if they resemble employees in conventional workplaces, they care about the length of their working hours. In this paper, their choice of hours is characterized as a conventional labor supply decision and a familiar hours-wage relationship is derived. This is estimated using mill-year observations on the plywood coops in the Pacific Northwest. The results are compared with those from the work behavior of other self-employed workers and with working hours in capitalist plywood mills.

In this work we present the results of a recent survey that covered the whole universe of Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay. In order to be able to evaluate the comparative performance of Worker Cooperatives the survey covered also a control group of conventional firms with similar size and sector composition. In line with previous empirical research and theoretical literature, we report significant differences between the two groups of firms in several aspects of economic behavior. Cooperatives in Uruguay exhibit lower variation in wage and employment levels over time and lower dispersion of wages among workers of the same firm. They have a lower proportion of workers performing supervision tasks, lower investment rates and are less capitalintensive than the control group. Within the cooperative universe, lower investment rates and capital intensity are positively related with worker-owners being older and with the inexistence of membership markets, or more generally, of any form of individually specified property rights. On the other hand, we report no relevant differences in innovation activities and propensity to cooperate with other firms. These results are discussed in the context of the existent theoretical and empirical literature about the relative economic performance of Worker Cooperatives.

The literature postulates that government subsidization of strategic R&D activities of profit maximising firms (PMFs) increases their shares in international markets. Will this also hold for labor-managed firms (LMFs) which are owned by employees and aim to maximize the profit per labor? This paper provides a theoretical model that examines how such governmental interventions can help LMFs in their home countries to compete better with PMFs in international markets. Our model shows that in most, but not all cases, investing more in R&D activities benefits LMFs by increasing their shares in international markets and decreasing the market share of their competitors. The optimal government R&D subsidy or tax for LMFs depends on the R&D elasticity of LMFs as well as how their competitors react to R&D investment. In contrast, the optimal government R&D subsidy for PMFs depends solely on the slope of the R&D reaction curve of their competitors. Our results present useful policy implications for those governments that seek ways to support LMFs-or more broadly cooperatives-to attain more sustained growth given their advantages over PMFs in the context of sustainable development.

Bogetik, hljko, and Heffley, Dennis-Market Syndicalism and Market Imbalances The endogenous relationship between income-per-worker (Y) and product price (E') under labor management or, more broadly, market syndicalism, causes P to play a critical role in clearing product and labor markets. The level of P that clears the product market, however, may differ from the level of P required for the labor market to clear. Since only one value of Pcan prevail at a time, clearing ofthe product market does not ensure clearing of the labor market, and vice versa. The analysis of divergent equilibria is extended to include government. Tax/subsidy instruments can be used to achieve general equilibrium in a syndicalist economy, but resulting fiscal imbalances may require additional forms of intervention.

A PERENNIAL ISSUE in the study of organizational behavior is the impact on productivity of participation by workers in a firm's decisionmaking. The question has returned to the foreground in the recent debate over policies to increase U.S. productivity growth.' A large literature is aimed at quantifying the impact of worker participation on productivity though the results from this research fall somewhat short of being fully persuasive.2 There are several difficulties in this research, not least that worker participation can mean various things in different contexts. At one extreme, workers may be consulted on a narrow range of issues, and the consultations may be designed more to give the appear-1. The 1994 Economic Report of the President states that "the Administration aims

In this work we present the results of a recent survey that covered the whole universe of Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay. In order to be able to evaluate the comparative performance of Worker Cooperatives the survey covered also a control group of conventional firms with similar size and sector composition. In line with previous empirical research and theoretical literature, we report significant differences between the two groups of firms in several aspects of economic behavior. Cooperatives in Uruguay exhibit lower variation in wage and employment levels over time and lower dispersion of wages among workers of the same firm. They have a lower proportion of workers performing supervision tasks, lower investment rates and are less capitalintensive than the control group. Within the cooperative universe, lower investment rates and capital intensity are positively related with worker-owners being older and with the inexistence of membership markets, or more generally, of any form of individually specified property rights. On the other hand, we report no relevant differences in innovation activities and propensity to cooperate with other firms. These results are discussed in the context of the existent theoretical and empirical literature about the relative economic performance of Worker Cooperatives.

The degeneration hypothesis of worker-managed firms (WMFs) asserts that the pursuit of higher earnings would induce successful WMFs to gradually disintegrate their labor-managed economies and become more similar to a conventional firm. Although this issue has been widely discussed, it has rarely been tested empirically. This research presents new econometric evidence on the behavior of WMFs, highlighting the differences within the firm between members and nonmembers. I use a comprehensive linked employee-employer panel data set of workers registered in Uruguay's social security records from 1996 to 2013. The resulting evidence shows that WMFs hire an increasing share of employees. However, the share of employees that the PC chose to hire does not seem to have been effected by variations in the level of success of PCs, suggesting that Uruguayan WMFs do not exhibit this type of degeneration process.

Using two new data sets from France, the authors present the first study of the comparative productivity of labor-managed and conventional firms involving large representative samples of firms in a range of industries including services. Their study offers new stylized facts on labor-managed firms, and disentangles incentive effects from those of differences in input demand behavior on factor elasticities. Contrary to received wisdom, labor-managed firms are not smaller than conventional firms; they grow as fast or faster in all industries. The two groups of firms organize production differently. Labor-managed firms are as productive as conventional firms, or more productive, in all industries, and use their inputs efficiently; but in several industries conventional firms would produce more with their current input levels if they organized production like labor-managed firms. On average overall, firms would produce more using the labor-managed firms' industry-specific technologi...

A partir de un análisis institucional comparado se definen las características institucionales y los problemas de agencia en los diferentes tipos de empresas. A continuación se examina la interdependencia y circularidad del problema de agencia en las empresas de trabajo asociado y los problemas de control que se producen en estas empresas, destacando el problema del control tanto en lo que respecta al comportamiento directivo como en lo que se refiere al trabajo operativo. Una novedad de este trabajo es el estudio, de forma conjunta, de diferentes niveles jerárquicos, abordando los diferentes tipos de trabajo y sus facilidades o dificultades de medición y evaluación como sustrato básico del problema de agencia. Lo que en el presente artículo se suma a los problemas de agencia clásicos del comportamiento directivo.

utilidad para comprender los factores que influyen en la satisfacción de los socios con la cooperativa y, en definitiva, en la supervivencia y éxito de esta singular organización. Esta teoría revela importantes diferencias con las empresas capitalistas en cuanto a la forma en que los socios ejercen sus derechos de propiedad. Así, en las cooperativas sus socios ejercitan estos derechos en función a la actividad cooperativizada que realizan y, además, estas organizaciones presentan limitaciones en la transferencia de estos derechos en lo relativo a quién se pueden transferir y al valor de la transmisión. Estas peculiaridades de las cooperativas en cuanto al tratamiento de los derechos de propiedad conllevan una serie de ineficiencias que se concretan en los problemas del polizón, horizonte temporal y riesgo. La consecuencia más importante de estos problemas es que desincentivan la realización de inversiones por los socios y comprometen el crecimiento y la supervivencia de la cooperativa. Los resultados del estudio empírico, realizado con la información obtenida de una encuesta a 277 socios de cooperativas agrarias, confirman que en la medida en que se reducen los problemas asociados con el polizón, el horizonte temporal y el riesgo, aumenta la satisfacción de los socios con la cooperativa. De aquí la importancia de que los responsables de administrar las cooperativas agrarias introduzcan mecanismos adecuados para atenuar los problemas asociados a la singular forma de ejercer los socios sus derechos de propiedad.

The authors are grateful to the French worker cooperatives federation, Confédération Générale des SCOP (CG-SCOP) for communicating the data on cooperatives and to Jean-Marie Collache and Alain Schlecht for transferring and documenting the data; and to Aurélie Charles for her excellent assistance in mounting one of the data sets. Participants in an ERMES seminar, in the IAFEP

espanolEl presente articulo busca ofrecer una vision panoramica de la literatura teorica que aborda un problema de investigacion relativamente novedoso, al menos en el medio academico local. ?Por que las cooperativas de trabajadores representan una proporcion marginal del universo de empresas y del empleo total en cualquier economia de mercado contemporanea? En este sentido, se identifican cuatro grandes grupos de explicaciones: i) las que enfatizan los problemas de inversion y acumulacion de las empresas de trabajadores, ii) las que enfatizan los problemas de monitoreo del esfuerzo y de incentivos al trabajo, iii) las que enfatizan los costos de las decisiones colectivas y iv) las que plantean la importancia del entorno institucional y de su evolucion, asi como la relacion entre el grado de desigualdad patrimonial y los procesos de seleccion organizacional. El articulo sugiere una amplia agenda de investigacion para aquellos interesados en el fenomeno de las empresas autogestionada...

The theoretical discussion concerning the comparison of employment and wage decisions between capitalist firms and worker cooperatives began with the seminal work of Ward (1958). The model assumes that worker cooperatives maximizes the net income per member instead of total profits. Even though it has been largely criticized, the Ward model has dominated the theoretical literature on worker coops. For instance, some authors have argued that worker coops are not only concerned about income per worker but also employment levels. However, the empirical content of these competing theoretical models has been rarely analyzed. In this article, following the methodology proposed by Craig and Pencavel (1993), we estimate the parameters of a generic objective function. These parameters determine the relative importance that worker coops place on income per worker vis-a-vis the level of employment. The study is based a long micro-panel of Uruguayan firms containing the entire population of wor...

The degeneration hypothesis in labor-managed firms (LMFs) was originally formalized by the seminal contributions of Ben-Ner (1984) and Miyazaki (1984). Within these models, LMFs are collectively owned by workers-members who can hire employees from the labor market. The pursuit of efficiency or higher incomes would induce the successful coops to become more entrepreneurial and gradually disintegrate the labor-managed economies. Although it has been largely discussed, these models have rarely been contrasted empirically. This research presents new econometric evidence on the behavior of labor-managed firms, highlighting the differences within the firm between members and non-members. We use a comprehensive panel data set that covers the entire population of cooperative workers (members and employees) registered in the social security records in Uruguay from January 1997 to April 2010. We analyze the data to study the determinants of employees hiring in producer cooperatives and test t...

Se puede encontrar información sobre esta Asociación y sus actividades en: http://eaepe.tuwien.ac.at/.Elartículo se publica con autorización del autor. Traducción de Ángela Montoya, revisión técnica y edición de Alberto Supelano. Agradezco a Fabrizio Barca, Gianni Fodella, Katsuhito Iwai, Lionello Punzo, Bob Rowthorn y Sandro Trento por sus útiles sugerencias. También fue muy útil la asistencia a los seminarios y conferencias sobre el Japón que Michio Morishima y Tsumeo Ishikawa dictaron en Siena. Estoy agradecido por los valiosos comentarios de ,los participantes en la conferencia Eu CopEes realizada en Varsovia en septiembre de 1996 así como con los participantes en el seminario CEU realizado en Budapest en noviembre de 1996. Hago las salvedades habituales.

Se puede encontrar información sobre esta Asociación y sus actividades en: http://eaepe.tuwien.ac.at/.Elartículo se publica con autorización del autor. Traducción de Ángela Montoya, revisión técnica y edición de Alberto Supelano. Agradezco a Fabrizio Barca, Gianni Fodella, Katsuhito Iwai, Lionello Punzo, Bob Rowthorn y Sandro Trento por sus útiles sugerencias. También fue muy útil la asistencia a los seminarios y conferencias sobre el Japón que Michio Morishima y Tsumeo Ishikawa dictaron en Siena. Estoy agradecido por los valiosos comentarios de ,los participantes en la conferencia Eu CopEes realizada en Varsovia en septiembre de 1996 así como con los participantes en el seminario CEU realizado en Budapest en noviembre de 1996. Hago las salvedades habituales.

In this work we present the results of a recent survey that covered the whole universe of Worker Cooperatives in Uruguay. In order to be able to evaluate the comparative performance of Worker Cooperatives the survey covered also a control group of conventional firms with similar size and sector composition. In line with previous empirical research and theoretical literature, we report significant differences between the two groups of firms in several aspects of economic behavior. Cooperatives in Uruguay exhibit lower variation in wage and employment levels over time and lower dispersion of wages among workers of the same firm. They have a lower proportion of workers performing supervision tasks, lower investment rates and are less capitalintensive than the control group. Within the cooperative universe, lower investment rates and capital intensity are positively related with worker-owners being older and with the inexistence of membership markets, or more generally, of any form of individually specified property rights. On the other hand, we report no relevant differences in innovation activities and propensity to cooperate with other firms. These results are discussed in the context of the existent theoretical and empirical literature about the relative economic performance of Worker Cooperatives.

The participatory governance on the workplace remains rare. Control does not follow ownership by logical necessity; why, then, is the capitalist enterprise so prevalent? Oliver Williamson, Michael Jensen, Henry Hansmann and some other scholars take the paucity of labour-managed firms (i.e. the prevalence of capitalist firm) as the evidence for the inefficiency of democratic governance. For support to this proposition, they turn to the early characterization of the evolutionary dynamics on competitive markets by Armen Alchian (1950). He argues that firms are selected for according to their relative profits, and that the relatively profitable production behaviour prevails on the markets. Similarly, the Efficiency Branch argues that it is the relatively efficient organizational form that prevails on the markets. Thus; if we observe an organizational form to be rare, this means that it is relatively inefficient. In my thesis, I show that the evolutionary argument employed in support of ...

Chillemi, Ottorino, and Gui, Benedetto-On the Performance of Worker-Managed Firms: Does Participation Only Exert "Technical" Effects? We consider those studies of worker-managed firms that estimate production functions augmented to include indexes of worker participation. We argue that, when output is measured by value added, participation can affect output not only via technical effects, as usually interpreted, but also via distinct economic effects. We formalize a situation in which the choice of product type and the expected profitability of the firm depend on the amount of collective reserves and the proportion of workers that are members.

Chillemi, Ottorino, and Gui, Benedetto-On the Performance of Worker-Managed Firms: Does Participation Only Exert "Technical" Effects? We consider those studies of worker-managed firms that estimate production functions augmented to include indexes of worker participation. We argue that, when output is measured by value added, participation can affect output not only via technical effects, as usually interpreted, but also via distinct economic effects. We formalize a situation in which the choice of product type and the expected profitability of the firm depend on the amount of collective reserves and the proportion of workers that are members.

and three anonymous referees for comments on various drafts of this paper. Jones acknowledges with gratitude thefinancial assistance of the National Science Foundation (Grant # 9010591). Of course, all remaining errors and any omissions are entirely the responsibility of the authors. I. Characterizing Producer Cooperatives PRODUCER COOPERATIVES (hereafter, PCs) have existed in Western economies since the advent of the factory system. The oldest surviving PCs in the U.K. and Italy are over one hundred years old. Nineteenth century economists of the stature of John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall commented on organizations that encouraged worker control. The first volumes published by the American Economic Association (1887, 1888) contained case studies of U.S. PCs. Beginning with Benjamin Ward's seminal theoretical paper in 1958, the economic literature on PC-type firms has grown substantially. (For a survey, see Bonin and Putterman 1987.) The burgeoning modern literature is matched by significant growth in the number of PCs in Western economies over roughly the same time period. From 1976-1981, 6,700 new PCs were created in the European Community (EC) accounting for 223,000 additional jobs (Ben-Ner 1988a). By 1981, EC countries had over 14,000 PCs with employment in these firms totaling about half a million people. How-1290

Aunque el término institución tiene una larga historia en las ciencias sociales, aún no existe consenso en torno a su definición. El autor primero muestra las ambigüedades que presentan los planteamientos de North al limitar el concepto de institución a los sistemas de reglas formales que rigen a las organizaciones. Luego, para superar estas dificultades, propone un concepto más amplio que tiene en cuenta la base informal de todo comportamiento estructurado y duradero.

El cooperativismo de trabajo es uno de los principales exponentes de la Democracia Económica en cuanto a elaboraciones teóricas y realizaciones prácticas. En este sentido, las cooperativas de trabajo se conciben como las organizaciones en donde, a partir de la propiedad común por parte de los trabajadores, se materializa un manejo económico igualitario basado en el principio "una persona, un voto", con independencia del capital aportado. No obstante, a la hora de llevar a la práctica este ideal surgen incongruencias, ya que, si bien el espacio de gobernanza y delimitación estratégica-la Asamblea de socios-funciona de esta manera, la mayoría de los restantes ámbitos de la gestión suelen adoptar el típico esquema de cadena de mando burocrática, dado que los arreglos en clásicas relaciones de autoridad se consideran elementos ineludibles a la hora de lograr coordinación en el trabajo diario. Surge así la Disonancia Cooperativa, concepto referido al carácter dual y contradictorio del conjunto de experiencias laborales, que van desde los encuentros asamblearios con igualdad democrática hasta los procesos de trabajo cotidiano con autocracia y desigualdad en la distribución del poder decisorio. El planteo de esta disonancia en la gestión de las cooperativas de trabajo, sus efectos y los posibles enfoques superadores representan el principal aporte de este artículo. Palabras claves: conflicto organizacional; cooperativas de trabajo; disonancia cooperativa; gestión. Abstract Labor cooperativism is one of the main exponents of Economic Democracy in terms of theoretical elaborations and practical implementations. In this sense, worker cooperatives are conceived as organizations where, stemming from workers' common ownership, egalitarian economic management is materialized based on the principle "one person, one vote," regardless of contributed capital. However, when it comes to putting this ideal into practice, inconsistencies arise since, although the space for governance and strategic delimitation-the Meeting of members-works in this way, most of the remaining areas of management usually adopt the typical bureaucratic chain of command scheme, as the arrangements in classic authority relations are considered unavoidable elements when it comes to achieving coordination in daily work. This is how the Cooperative Dissonance arises, a concept that refers to the dual and contradictory nature of the set of work experiences, ranging from the assembly meetings with democratic equality to the everyday work processes with autocracy and inequality in the distribution of decision-making power. The proposition of this dissonance in worker cooperatives' management, its effects and the possible overcoming approaches represent the main contribution of this article.

The degeneration hypothesis of worker-managed firms (WMFs) asserts that the pursuit of higher earnings would induce successful WMFs to gradually disintegrate their labor-managed economies and become more similar to a conventional firm. Although this issue has been widely discussed, it has rarely been tested empirically. This research presents new econometric evidence on the behavior of WMFs, highlighting the differences within the firm between members and nonmembers. I use a comprehensive linked employee-employer panel data set of workers registered in Uruguay's social security records from 1996 to 2013. The resulting evidence shows that WMFs hire an increasing share of employees. However, the share of employees that the PC chose to hire does not seem to have been effected by variations in the level of success of PCs, suggesting that Uruguayan WMFs do not exhibit this type of degeneration process.

The participatory governance on the workplace remains rare. Control does not follow ownership by logical necessity; why, then, is the capitalist enterprise so prevalent? Oli-ver Williamson, Michael Jensen, Henry Hansmann and some other scholars take the paucity of labour-managed firms (i.e. the prevalence of capitalist firm) as the evidence for the inefficiency of democratic governance. For support to this proposition, they turn to the early characterization of the evolutionary dynamics on competitive markets by Armen Alchian (1950). He argues that firms are selected for according to their relative profits, and that the relatively profitable production behaviour prevails on the markets. Similarly, the Efficiency Branch argues that it is the relatively efficient organizational form that prevails on the markets. Thus; if we observe an organizational form to be rare, this means that it is relatively inefficient. In my thesis, I show that the evolutionary argument employed in support of this proposition is incomplete. Prevalence consists of both differential survival and differential birth, therefore, we should also be able to explain how different organizational modes enter the markets. I introduce the appropriation hypothesis that suggests that capitalist enterprise is formed more often because it allows easier appropriation of benefits for certain groups, and not necessarily because it is technologically superior. As long as we define inefficiency in the terms of technological inefficiency, we cannot take the paucity of labour-managed firms as the evidence for their inefficiency.

A Teoria Moderna da Firma centrou-se na análise de empresas hierárquicas, mostrando uma relutância em estudar os processos de autogestão. Na verdade, com a exceção de certas contribuições marginais, sob o preconceito teórico de que todos os agentes se comportam sob parâmetros racionais, uma evidên-cia empírica, robusta que enfatiza a existência de uma diversidade de empresas não convencionais que responde foi ignorada, a uma lógica baseada na horizontalidade, conseguiu manter processos bem-sucedi-dos de autogestão ao longo do tempo, uma sobrevivência sustentada. Na verdade, a literatura econômica mostrou um ceticismo marcado sobre a capacidade de sobrevivência das pequenas cooperativas, assum-indo que as estratégias egoístas individuais prevalecendo sobre o interesse coletivo. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o surgimento de resultados empíricos de ação coletiva, usando Teoria do Jogo e análise experimental, de modo a incorporar certas variantes ao cenário estático que melhor represente a situação de interdependência na qual estão inseridas ideias cooperativistas. Em particular, analisamos os efeitos sobre o comportamento dos agentes decorrentes da adição de determina-das regras do jogo (instituições) do que da perspectiva do design institucional, possibilitam a cooperação. O principal resultado do trabalho ressalta que uma mal instituição inchada, que consegue fazer surgir a cooperação como resultado empírico, abrindo no campo da economia de organizações novas perspectivas para o estudo de confiança e capital social. Palavras-chave: Cooperativas. Autogestão Análise Experimental Comunicação Cooperação

The Modern Theory of the Firm has focused on the analysis of hierarchical firms, showing its reticence to the study of self-management processes. In effect,-except for certain marginal contributions-under the theoretical preconception that all the agents behave under rational parameters, it has been completely disregarded some robust empirical evidence emphasizing the existence of a diversity of non-conventional firms, that responding to a logic based on horizontality, manage to sustain successful self-management processes in time-read, a sustained survival-. In effect, economic literature has evidenced noticeable skepticism about the survival capacity of small work cooperatives presupposing that selfish individual strategies prevail over collective interest. The present work proposes to analyse the emergence of empirical results of collective action making use of the Game Theory and the experimental analysis, with the purpose of incorporating certain variants to the static scenario that best represents the interdependence situation in which cooperativists are immersed. Specifically, the effects over the behavior of agents that arise from adding certain rules of game (institutions) that make cooperation possible, from the perspective of institutional design, are analysed. The main result of the work highlights that a Robust Institutional Mesh succeeds in making cooperation emerge as empirical result, opening new perspectives for the study of Trust and Social Capital, in the field of Organizational Economics.

La Teoría Moderna de la Firma se ha abocado al análisis de firmas jerárquicas, mostrándose reticente al estudio de los procesos de autogestión. En efecto,-a excepción de ciertas contribuciones marginales-bajo la preconcepción teórica de que todos los agentes se comportan bajo parámetros racionales, se ha hecho caso omiso a una robusta evidencia empírica que enfatiza sobre la existencia de una diversidad de firmas no convencionales que respondiendo a una lógica basada en la horizontalidad, logran sostener en el tiempo procesos exitosos de autogestión-léase, una supervivencia sostenida-. En efecto, la literatura económica ha evidenciado un marcado escepticismo sobre la capacidad de supervivencia de las pequeñas cooperati-vas de trabajo, al presuponer que las estrategias individuales egoístas prevalecen sobre el interés colectivo. El presente trabajo se propone analizar la emergencia de resultados empíricos de acción colectiva valiéndose de la Teoría de Juegos y el análisis experimental, a los fines de incorporar ciertas variantes al escenario estático que mejor representa la situación de interdependencia en la que se ven insertos los cooperativistas. En concreto, se analizan los efectos sobre el comportamiento de los agentes que surgen de adicionar ciertas reglas de juego (instituciones) que desde la perspectiva del diseño institucional hacen posible la cooperación. El principal resultado del trabajo pone en relieve que una Malla Institucional Robusta logra hacer que la cooperación emerja como resultado empírico, abriendo en el campo de la Economía de las Organizaciones nuevas perspectivas para el estudio de la Confianza y el Capital Social.

El Relevamiento Industrial de la ciudad de Tandil (RIT), se llevó a cabo a partir Convenio  Res. CS Nº 118. (28/2/2013) entre el Municipio de Tandil y la UNCPBA con la finalidad de actualizar la información preexistente de los dos relevamientos anteriores (1994 y 2002). El Convenio se realizó en la Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, por medio del Centro de Investigaciones Geográficas y en el Municipio de Tandil se gestionó desde la Secretaría de Desarrollo económico y Local.
Los datos del RIT, están amparados por el secreto estadístico y son absolutamente confidenciales. Consecuentemente, en los cuadros estadísticos se consigna la información agregada y los resultados se presentan por ramas de actividad.
El trabajo de campo se realizó durante los meses de mayo a septiembre de 2013, y lo efectuaron 24 encuestadores (alumnos y alumnas de la Facultad de Ciencias Humanas).
Se aplicó un cuestionario que fue revisado y consensuado con las diferentes instituciones que colaboraron en este trabajo, ellas son: APYMET, CET, IDEB, CEPIT.

English abstract below
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Las cooperativas de trabajo asociado tienen un papel fundamental en la mejora de la calidad de vida de las personas, a través de la solución de su situación laboral y con la puesta en práctica de valores deseables para la sociedad. Insertas en el sistema de competencia capitalista, actualmente y desde hace ya algunas décadas se enfrentan al reto de la globalización que les impone la necesidad de internacionalizarse para su supervivencia, pero al mismo tiempo les ofrece la posibilidad de globalizar sus principios. Se vuelve necesario entonces el estudio del proceso de internacionalización de las cooperativas de trabajo asociado, buscando que sean competitivas sin perder de vista sus valores y principios, guía fundamental de su accionar. En este trabajo se realiza la propuesta de un modelo para el estudio del proceso de internacionalización de las cooperativas de trabajo asociado uruguayas, basado en el modelo de Uppsala en su versión más actualizada y a la luz de la literatura sobre los principios y principales características del cooperativismo. Para la contrastación empírica del modelo, se utiliza como metodología el estudio de casos.
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Worker cooperatives have a key role to play in the improvement of people’s life conditions through solving their employment needs and introducing desirable values for the society. Dealing with the capitalist system of competition, nowadays and since some decades, they are facing the challenges imposed by globalization, such as the necessity of internationalisation, but also with the opportunity of globalizing their principles too. Therefore, it becomes necessary to study the internationalisation process of the worker cooperatives in search for their competitiveness without losing their values and principles, key guidelines for their actions. This research work proposes a model for the study of the internationalisation process of the Uruguayan worker cooperatives, based on the newest version of the Uppsala model and taking into account the existing literature concerning cooperative main features and principles. For the empirical support of the model, the methodology used is the case study.

This paper explores whether labour-management theory provides significant insights into the operation of the Yugoslav economy and into the process of transition in the Yugoslav successor states. It concludes that the literature offered only modest insights into the operation of the Yugoslav economy, primarily because Yugoslavia did not satisfy many of the basic assumptions of the model. The socialist features of the Yugoslav economy remained dominant, suppressing many of the elements of economic democracy. The most significant contributions of the labour-management literature were theoretical, concerning supply responses of worker-controlled firms in a decentralised source allocation mechanism and the incentive, organisational and efficiency aspects of labour-management.

It is well known that Serbia – along with the other Southeast European successor states of former Yugoslavia – emerged from a country recognized for its specific labour-managed institutional arrangement. The paper recalls the main premises of the literature on the labour-managed firm and the theoretical contributions on participatory forms of management that seem most relevant to a transition economy like Serbia's. It proceeds to analyze the main changes that occurred in Serbia during transition to a market economy, illustrating some of its specific features and how privatization led to the conversion of workers self-management into property rights. In order to analyze the role of employees in decision-making, and more generally their current position in privatized and newly established private firms, a survey was undertaken in 2013 based on a questionnaire for managers in 69 Serbian firms. The survey suggests that internal relations in enterprises are relatively undeveloped, particularly regarding the distribution of responsibilities in decision making at various organisational levels, hampering the efficient fulfilment of firms' objectives. It appears that decision-making processes are usually designed in such a way as to give an excessive role to the owner as the exclusive decision-maker. The position of workers seems to be particularly poor regarding their rights to be informed, to make proposals, and/or to participate in decision-making in general. Moreover, even traditional workers' rights are neglected (unionization, collective bargaining etc.). The survey also suggests that in those firms with a more active role of workers, there is a higher degree of workers' satisfaction and loyalty to the firm.

La conception socialiste des retraites s’est cristallisée dans les années 1880- 1914 tandis que les socialistes s’opposaient sur la propriété au sein des coopératives. Jaurès a défendu des positions originales sur la propriété collective et la solidarité dans l’évolution économique. L’expérience d’Agun Aro du complexe coopératif de Mondragon permet de prolonger ces débats.

Labor-management relations are the interacting relations between labor and management. The purpose of our study is to find out the worker wage satisfaction, worker satisfaction with supervisory behavior and worker satisfaction with welfare items. This cross sectional study was conducted from October 2010 to January 2011. A group of 200 employees was take part in this study through a predesigned questionnaire which consists of three parts to meet the objectives, which was collected from private organizations. There is an dilemma of weak relationship between labor and management that the labor force is not satisfied with their management behavior, wages and welfare items. Which tends towards the lack of accuracy in products and process of producing products. By this research we come to conclusion that the government should took part in this segment to apply the labor law accurately to provide the rights to the labor force and management should also have to contribute their efforts to satisfy their labor force so that they can perform well when they were satisfied perfect. Its means that the management is the part of labor force and labor is the part of management. This relation can become strong when they provide satisfaction to each other in work place.