The challenge for Mondragon: Searching for the cooperative values in times of internationalization

TLDR

Global competitiveness, intensified by the financial crisis, has challenged conventional firms and highlighted the need for alternative production models, yet worker cooperatives have received limited scholarly focus. The study examines how Mondragon confronts the tension between expanding internationally and maintaining cooperative values, aiming to illuminate strategies for worker cooperatives’ global growth. The authors analyze Mondragon’s response through establishing mixed cooperatives and extending its corporate management model.

Abstract

Competitiveness today requires being able to operate at a global scale. The financial crisis invigorated this requirement, posing new challenges to the economic viability of conventional companies and demanding alternative organizational forms of production. Although a wealth of research has focused on capitalist companies, little attention has been paid to the way these challenges affected worker cooperatives. Drawing from a qualitative case study of the Mondragon Cooperative Group, this article discusses the obstacles to internationalization faced by worker cooperatives, as well as the specific conditions and implications involved. In particular, the article analyzes Mondragon’s contradiction between being forced to expand and trying to keep cooperative values during this expansion. Two main actions aimed at responding to this contradiction are analyzed: the creation of mixed cooperatives and the extension of the corporate management model. The analysis of this process will shed light on actions for the global expansion of worker cooperatives.