Participation and Organizational Commitment in the Mondragon Group
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Frontiers
Materia
Mondragon Corporation Worker cooperatives Organizational commitment Participation Psychological wellbeing Organizational democracy
Fecha
2022-03-15Referencia bibliográfica
Rodríguez-Oramas A... [et al.] (2022) Participation and Organizational Commitment in the Mondragon Group. Front. Psychol. 13:806442. doi: [10.3389/fpsyg.2022.806442]
Patrocinador
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the National RD Program CSO2011-26179Resumen
The scientific literature has shown Mondragon Corporation (MC), with 65 years of
history, as a clear example that cooperativism can be highly competitive in the capitalist
market while being highly egalitarian and democratic. This cooperative group has
focused on its corporate values of cooperation, participation, social responsibility,
and innovation. Previous scientific research reports its enormous transformative
and emancipatory potential. However, studies on the effects of various types of
worker participation on competitiveness and workers’ psychological wellbeing in this
cooperative group exist to a lesser extent. Specifically, one aspect that needs further
empirical research and that represents a competitive advantage for Mondragon is
the degree of commitment and emotional attachment that can be observed in the
people who work there. For this reason, this article aims to identify key elements
of the democratic participation of workers in these cooperatives that relate to the
development of organizational commitment. Based on a communicative and qualitative
approach, data collection included 29 interviews to different profiles of workers (senior
and junior workers, members and non-members of the cooperative, and researchers
involved in the cooperatives) from eight different cooperatives of the Corporation.
Through this research methodology, the participants interpret their reality through
egalitarian and intersubjective dialogue because their voices are considered essential
to measure the social impact. This study found three different ways in which the
democratic participation of worker-members in management and ownership contributes
to developing affective organizational commitment among those working in Mondragon
cooperatives, generating positive psychological and economic outcomes for both
workers and cooperatives.