The Catalan co-operative movement (1975-2019): generating ethical enterprises and quality of working life in service-sector professions

Abstract

This thesis traces the evolution of the Catalan co-operative movement and the solidarity economy between the years 1975 and 2019. The aim has been to better understand how social actors have contributed to the concerted growth of this socio-economic transformative movement since the 1990s. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews conducted with forty-two individuals across twenty-two worker co-operatives located in and around Barcelona Province. The analysis compared the experiences of these architects, legal- finance- and organisation professionals, social scientists, authors and journalists, software and multimedia designers, musicians and music educators, and audiovisual technicians. Drawing on these participants’ experiences, the thesis pursued two lines of enquiry. The first line of enquiry was to understand how these service-sector professionals and technicians came to view co-operative self-management as a meaningful and viable way to organise their working lives, especially in the context of the employment crisis that began in 2008. Moving beyond the idea of the employment cycle as the prime determinant of co-operative participation, this thesis sought to understand the interrelationship between value-based motives and those of a more pragmatic nature, including these individuals’ search for an improved quality of working life. The second line of enquiry investigated how the participants approached the tensions involved in sustaining their ethical values while navigating multiple objectives and pursuing quality of working life in capitalist market environments that are often unfavourable to such aims.

The topic of this thesis is relevant to anyone who seeks viable enterprise alternatives to those prioritising the interests of capital and profit-maximisation. In an uncertain world of work in which the social protections and labour rights that should guarantee job quality have been increasingly dismantled, co-operative self-management has the potential to generate not only stable employment but also work that is experienced as engaging, meaningful, and socially useful. This thesis seeks to demonstrate, moreover, that it is possible to sustain viable co-operative enterprises in different occupations. It will be argued that creating enterprises that enable individuals to reflect upon and act according to their ethics and values has important benefits for individuals and organisations, as well as for society more widely, with respect to realising positive social, economic, and environmental outcomes.