Who Needs a Boss?

#1

Post by HSO » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 11:29 AM UTC

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#2

Post by sasvari » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 12:43 PM UTC

The Basque Mondragon Corporation [0] is actually very impressive:

  It is the seventh-largest Spanish company in terms of asset
  turnover and the leading business group in the Basque
  Country. At the end of 2012, it employed 80,321 people in
  289 companies and organizations in four areas of activity:
  finance, industry, retail and knowledge.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#3

Post by PalUk » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 12:53 PM UTC

It's one of those rare stories that doesn't claim to take cutting edge technology to make it successful. Just people working together and owning a business, together deciding on their next move. And it has proven to work well. Wow, very inspiring.

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#4

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:00 PM UTC

A worker co-operative seems like the ideal corporate structure for the typical consulting software shop. It can be set up to be very corporate-like or it can be set up as a loose group of freelancers who pooled together to share a health insurance plan, or anything in between.

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#5

Post by wallflower » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:00 PM UTC

PalUk wrote: post #3

It's one of those rare stories that doesn't claim to take cutting edge technology to make it successful. Just people working together and owning a business, together deciding on their next move. And it has proven to work well. Wow, very inspiring.

You might like the story of Bob's Red Mill which was organic before people even were marketed that term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_Red_Mill

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#6

Post by nmridul » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:04 PM UTC

Another success story of commercially successful cooperative society is Amul which is a cooperative dairy society. With 2 million + milk farmers as owners and is one of the forces that revolutionized milk production and distribution in India. Making India the largest producer of milk in the world [1].

The beauty is that, majority of these farmers own one or two cows and that is their main means of income for their whole family.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul [2] http://www.iitk.ac.in/ime/MBA_IITK/avantgarde/?p=1018

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#7

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:21 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #4

A worker co-operative seems like the ideal corporate structure for the typical consulting software shop. It can be set up to be very corporate-like or it can be set up as a loose group of freelancers who pooled together to share a health insurance plan, or anything in between.

http://techworker.coop/

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#8

Post by 001sky » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

Unfortunate Title. It's worth looking at some counter-examples, as Capital Structure (often) has precious little to do with management structure. Most non profits mimic the for-profit in organizational structure (ie, run by a CEO, with a staff of VPs...). On the other hand, many for-profit partnerships are quite flat and more egalitarian than their corporate cousins. Also, many co-ops still have a CEO (eg: REI, the outdoor goods store). The outgoing CEO for REI was in fact a banker previously and is now a government "boss" (a/k/a secretary of the interior).

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#9

Post by candybar » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else find media sites remapping left/right arrow keys to mean "move to previous/next article" completely annoying?

Re: Who Needs a Boss?

#10

Post by jorleif » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 1:32 PM UTC

While I think co-ops can work very well in some cases, I wonder how well they cope with significant change for the worse in their environment. If you need to lose a third of the workforce suddenly, can a co-op decide on that kind of thing or will it lead to some unproductive compromise, or even worse, denial?