The challenges of managing across borders in worker cooperatives: Insights from the Mondragon cooperative group

This article explores the challenges that worker cooperatives face when they operate and manage people across borders. Drawing on qualitative research on two Mondragon multinational co-ops based on longitudinal data and in-depth interviews, we address the dilemmas raised by the multinationalization of co-ops through the establishment of subsidiaries abroad, and show the tensions surrounding the 'cooperativization' of foreign subsidiaries, that is to say, the reproduction of the cooperative organizational formula and the transfer of its idiosyncratic policies and practices to foreign subsidiaries. The main finding of the research is that, behind the instrumentalization of various institutional barriers by the managerial technostructure of the parent co-ops to justify the non-cooperativization of foreign subsidiaries, lie factors stemming from headquarters-subsidiary power relations, as well as from core co-op owner-members looking to protect their own interests. Indeed, a clear dissociation has been found between the Mondragon corporate discourse about the promotion of participation and democracy overseas, and the real practices that are operational within the foreign subsidiaries. The article also draws some practical implications for multinational co-ops wishing to extend the cooperative model to their overseas subsidiaries.