Internationalization of the Social and Solidarity Economy: The Discourse of Mondragon Cooperatives’ Managers

Filip Majetic; Anjel Errasti; Sabine Heiss

doi:10.60923/issn.1971-8853/19458

Authors

Filip Majetic Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, Zagreb https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8685-7248

Filip Majetić, sociologist, is Senior Researcher at Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences (Zagreb, Croatia). He has published in journals such as Acta Sociologica, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Business and Society Review, Technology in Society, and New Media & Society. His primary research interests include alternative business models, non-standard working arrangements, and alternative consumption models.
Anjel Errasti Institute of Cooperative Law and Social Economy (GEZKI); University of the Basque Country (EHU) Donostia-San Sebastián https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9245-4293

Dr. Anjel Errasti is a lecturer in Strategic Management at the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and a member of the Institute of Cooperative Law and Social Economy (GEZKI). His research focuses on cooperatives and the social economy, public policy, employment relations, and the internationalization of worker cooperatives, particularly the Mondragon group. He has published in leading international journals, including Organization, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Business & Society, Economic and Industrial Democracy, and the Journal of Strategic Management. Among his main research interests, there are: cooperatives and the social economy, public policy, employment relations, self-management and large worker cooperatives, particularly the Mondragon group.
Sabine Heiss Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5471-9975

Sabine Heiss is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia (Spain). PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Spain) and MA in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). Member of the “Research Group on Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School” and the University Institute for Creativity and Educational Innovations (IUCIE) at the University of Valencia. Participant in the board of the international association DiscourseNet and the advisory board of the journal Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung. Among her research interests are: Latin American critical theory, the decolonisation of knowledge, discourse studies, and the sociology of education.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/19458

Keywords:

Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, internationalization, home versus non-home discrepancy, decolonial perspective

Abstract

Theoretically bounded by a critical inquiry into post-WWII international development, specifically the decolonial perspective, and relying on critical discourse analysis, this study aims to investigate and explain how the Mondragon cooperatives, prominent actors in the Social and Solidarity Economy, address the home versus non-home discrepancy in internationalizing business activities. More precisely, using discourse data stemming from in-depth interviews with Mondragon’s internationalization managers, how they discursively construct and address their business being run in a cooperative way in the home region, yet in a conventional, capitalist way in their foreign subsidiaries. The main findings include the identification of Mondragon’s discourses for dealing with the discrepancy (Announcing, Justifying, and Addressing the discrepancy) and the strategies for discursive construction of the discrepancy (illustrating the entire economic realm through the binary cooperativism-versus-capitalism lens and “othering” the subsidiary workers).

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Internationalization of the Social and Solidarity Economy: The Discourse of Mondragon Cooperatives’ Managers

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