This paper aims at analyzing the relevance and performance of the worker cooperative as a company model that embodies non-capitalist methods, and in particular, the impact of employee participation on the enterprise’s economic performance. Extensive previous literature about this subject has already been developed, especially on a theoretical level and in a neo-classical perspective: the main predictions of the economic theory established by Vanek (1970) and other authors like Jones & Svejnar (1982), Levin (1982 & 1984) among many others are gathered in Bonin & Putterman (1987) while Conte & Svejnar (1990) synthesizes the main results established by previous empirical studies. However, even though various effects of worker participation on worker cooperatives’ economic performance have been already pointed out empirically and theoretically, no consensus has been reached and the debate remains open. Therefore, our paper brings the discussion forward. By using more modern and accurate techniques and an much richer dataset, our analysis attempts to update and improve the results of previous empirical studies. Thanks to data provided by the Confédération Générale des Scop for the years 2006, 2009 and 2012, for more than 1,200 French Sociétés Coopératives et Participatives, we conduct our own study. Our main methodology consists in constructing and in estimating a production function "augmented" by variables that capture worker participation in governance, ownership and profits. This methodology is based on the one used, for instance, by Conte & Svejnar (1988), Defourny, Estrin & Jones (1985), Estrin, Jones & Svejnar (1987) and Jones & Svejnar (1985). Our approach allows us to demonstrate unequivocally that worker participation in ownership and profit are two mechanisms that significantly and positively influence the cooperative’s performance, mainly through increased productivity that workers achieve in order to receive extra income.
References
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