Category Archives: Research

New figures just published show that almost 10% of jobs in the world are either in a cooperative or closely linked to a cooperative. This figure includes employees in consumer coops, worker-owners in worker coops, and self-employed workers in producer … Continue reading →

Catherine W. Ng and Evelyn Ng (2009) “Balancing the Democracy Dilemmas: Experiences of Three Women Workers’ Cooperatives in Hong Kong.” Economic and Industrial Democracy 30(2), 182–206. This paper is a study of three new, radically horizontal worker-coop start-ups in Hong Kong. … Continue reading →

Beginning with some of the earliest socialist theorists, many have argued that worker cooperatives cannot remain democratic in the long term. This is called the ‘degeneration thesis’ and according to this view, worker cooperatives are inherently unstable and will inevitably … Continue reading →

Spencer Thompson from the University of Cambridge in the UK recently published a paper outlining a new theory of the firm, taking the worker-owned business as its starting point. It is a fascinating paper at a theoretical level, but in … Continue reading →

I often wonder why there aren’t more business schools for socialist entrepreneurs? There are some (for example, see here and here), but they are not common, and that definitely limits the growth of the cooperative economy. Classic business-management programs are … Continue reading →

Like all businesses, cooperatives can fail. Cooperatives can go bankrupt, but they can fail in another way too. Over time, cooperatives can degenerate. Cooperatives are said to degenerate when, under economic pressure, they abandon their cooperative principles and start adopting capitalist … Continue reading →

I just read a wonderful review article entitled “Worker Cooperatives: Good, Sustainable Jobs in the Community.” It was authored by Virginie Pérotin from the Leeds University Business School and was published in the Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity. In this … Continue reading →

In order to have a growing and sustainable cooperative business ecology you need at least two things: first, you need a continuous stream of newly founded worker-owned firms entering the ecology, either through conversions or as startups; and second, you need a growing cooperatively-owned financial … Continue reading →

Ross Brown at the University of St. Andrews and his colleagues recently published research demonstrating that Scottish employee-owned businesses outperform capitalist firms as measured both by growth in employee numbers and by growth in turnover. It is a small study – … Continue reading →