Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Rebón, Julián
Kasparian, Denise
Materias
Spatial Coverage
Idioma
spa
Extent
322 p.
Derechos
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Formato
application/pdf
Identificador
Cobertura
ARG
Abstract
The recovered companies refer to productive units that reconverted into Worker Cooperatives and are originated in the collective action of salaried workers in defence of their source of employment. The new legal form becomes a particular type of organization in its double character since it constitutes, on the one hand, a company that must comply with the parameters of economic activity competing in the market and, on the other, an organization of people that are structured around collective property, participation and democracy. This double character sets up a tensioned territory, that makes cooperatives a particular form of management in the search of administering way nodal aspects that require a balanced and productive articulation of the economic with the political stuff, efficiency with the internal democracy, and the quality of its products and services with the participation of its associates. In terms of workers organization, recovered companies were born, have developed and became established without having a theoretical-practical guide on how to carry out selfmanagement.
In this sense, the aim of this thesis is to explore in a descriptive and analytical way the innovations that appear in the work organization of the recovered companies from Argentina nowadays, an attempt is made to respond specifically to the problem of the existence of a new model of workers' post-fordism and the extent to which the modalities of work organization in these companies constitute innovations with respect to previous companies, to those different from capitalist forms of labor management and traditional cooperativism. For this, twenty-two companies recovered from all over the country from different sectors and regions are analyzed using a qualitative approach, surveyed using the technique of semistructured interview and observation. The methodological approach undertakes a dual analytical strategy in which a singular and comparative analysis of cases of the recovered companies is carried out. On the one hand, the singular reconstruction of each case regarding the work organization and innovations, is proposed. On the other hand, the multiple nature of the study allows addressing the different experiences comparatively in these dimensions, favoring a move forward to an analytical generalization.
The hypothesis that is upheld states that the innovations fail to configure an alternative model of work organization, so as to allow us to speak of the existence of a workers' post-fordism. At the same time, in the recovered companies that achieve a consolidation of selfmanagement , the existence of a series of innovative organizational devices is evidenced, the character of which tends to assume an experimental, trial and error model. These innovations are fundamentally nourished by the opening of the recovered companies towards other social actors.
In this work, a typology of recovered companies is elaborated, according to different selfmanagement situations. The first group is made up of half of the companies in the sample that achieve a “consolidation of self-management ”: they are characterized by reaching high levels of economic sustainability, building an internal democracy that sustains it, and achieving cohesion and integration of the collective of workers. The second group of "partially consolidated" companies, reach a situation of productive consolidation but fail to form a strengthened democracy or integrate the collective of workers, while others develop internal democracy, but are not productively consolidated. The third group contains the recovered companies without self-management consolidation, where the existence of an autonomous or democratic productive economic project is not observed.
The findings indicate that there are a series of innovative devices in relation to profit-sharing, job rotation, internal hierarchies, incorporation of associates committed to the project, professionalization of the management system, implementation of control, quality management and performance evaluation systems that entail systematization and ordering policies for the cooperative's management. These innovations aim to balance the double character that aligns the management of cooperatives so as to integrate the economic to the institutional lane. Some of the innovations are related to the previous capitalist enterprise, while others are in comparison with traditional cooperativism.
Organizational innovations are the result of a practical construction that must be constantly reconsidered, corrected, and does not follow an evolutionary model that goes from less, to greater development. However, this does not mean that companies always start from scratch. The networks of relationships between recovered companies, cooperatives, and small and medium sized enterprises, configure spaces for socialization where innovative experiences and organizational devices are discussed and collected. To a large extent, the innovations emerge basically from the working process, with the objective of alleviating the hierarchicalpyramidal relationships imposed by the organizational logic and technologies from the previous company. The factors that nurture innovation are a conjunction within the implementation and experimentation of devices, their constant deliberation, the opening of the company to relationships with other actors, and a culture oriented towards the care of internal democracy.
In this sense, the aim of this thesis is to explore in a descriptive and analytical way the innovations that appear in the work organization of the recovered companies from Argentina nowadays, an attempt is made to respond specifically to the problem of the existence of a new model of workers' post-fordism and the extent to which the modalities of work organization in these companies constitute innovations with respect to previous companies, to those different from capitalist forms of labor management and traditional cooperativism. For this, twenty-two companies recovered from all over the country from different sectors and regions are analyzed using a qualitative approach, surveyed using the technique of semistructured interview and observation. The methodological approach undertakes a dual analytical strategy in which a singular and comparative analysis of cases of the recovered companies is carried out. On the one hand, the singular reconstruction of each case regarding the work organization and innovations, is proposed. On the other hand, the multiple nature of the study allows addressing the different experiences comparatively in these dimensions, favoring a move forward to an analytical generalization.
The hypothesis that is upheld states that the innovations fail to configure an alternative model of work organization, so as to allow us to speak of the existence of a workers' post-fordism. At the same time, in the recovered companies that achieve a consolidation of selfmanagement , the existence of a series of innovative organizational devices is evidenced, the character of which tends to assume an experimental, trial and error model. These innovations are fundamentally nourished by the opening of the recovered companies towards other social actors.
In this work, a typology of recovered companies is elaborated, according to different selfmanagement situations. The first group is made up of half of the companies in the sample that achieve a “consolidation of self-management ”: they are characterized by reaching high levels of economic sustainability, building an internal democracy that sustains it, and achieving cohesion and integration of the collective of workers. The second group of "partially consolidated" companies, reach a situation of productive consolidation but fail to form a strengthened democracy or integrate the collective of workers, while others develop internal democracy, but are not productively consolidated. The third group contains the recovered companies without self-management consolidation, where the existence of an autonomous or democratic productive economic project is not observed.
The findings indicate that there are a series of innovative devices in relation to profit-sharing, job rotation, internal hierarchies, incorporation of associates committed to the project, professionalization of the management system, implementation of control, quality management and performance evaluation systems that entail systematization and ordering policies for the cooperative's management. These innovations aim to balance the double character that aligns the management of cooperatives so as to integrate the economic to the institutional lane. Some of the innovations are related to the previous capitalist enterprise, while others are in comparison with traditional cooperativism.
Organizational innovations are the result of a practical construction that must be constantly reconsidered, corrected, and does not follow an evolutionary model that goes from less, to greater development. However, this does not mean that companies always start from scratch. The networks of relationships between recovered companies, cooperatives, and small and medium sized enterprises, configure spaces for socialization where innovative experiences and organizational devices are discussed and collected. To a large extent, the innovations emerge basically from the working process, with the objective of alleviating the hierarchicalpyramidal relationships imposed by the organizational logic and technologies from the previous company. The factors that nurture innovation are a conjunction within the implementation and experimentation of devices, their constant deliberation, the opening of the company to relationships with other actors, and a culture oriented towards the care of internal democracy.
Título obtenido
Doctora de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales