Mondragon University U.S. College Tour

Dr. Jon Altuna, Vice Rector, Mondragon University, Fernando Landa, Mondragon International Director of the Americas, and Michael Peck, Mondragon North America delegate and co-founder, www.1worker1vote.org, will be visiting a number of U.S. universities in May to talk about Mondragon University’s Cooperative MBA Online in English product.

Mondragon is the world’s largest worker-owned industrial cooperative but also the top Basque region industrial group with its own university, bank, and insurance mutual, ranked tenth in Spain with 80,000 personnel, a presence in 70 countries, and winner of the 2013 Financial Times “Boldness in Business” award. Mondragon’s mission during the past sixty years since its founding is to generate wealth for society through business development and job creation under the “one worker, one vote” cooperative framework where labor is sovereign and capital, while essential, is subordinate to sustainable job creation.

Jon, Fernando, and Michael will be talking to various U.S. universities that have shown an in interest in the Mondragon model through organizations with the goal of creating partnerships for the Cooperative MBA Online in English project. Mondragon University’s intent is to build a national following for this course offering that will offer those interested in delving deeper into how to manage worker-cooperatives based on the Mondragon principles and sixty years of experience a chance to become qualified in that field.  Our target would be the nation’s 29,000 cooperatives, many of whom are searching for trained managers knowing that running a cooperative, even one that is now worker-owned, requires different skill sets.  We also believe that the still nascent but growing worker cooperative movement throughout the U.S. which continues to be attracted to the Mondragon model and track record will benefit from knowing that this course offering is available through regional and local like-minded educational institutions. We realize that this is a process and hope that our meetings could be starting points, perhaps through continuing/executive education programs if not core curricula.

MONDRAGON UNIVERSITY –http://www.mondragon.edu/ –  several publications about Mondragon University can be found (here).

• Mondragon University is a co-operative University situated in the Basque Country (Spain). Upon its founding in 1943, Mondragon University activities are at the heart of the Mondragon cooperative experience and global movement.
• Mondragon University benefits from a legal cooperative structure and is built upon a shared societal project with common cooperative principles such as the priority of work and employment, cooperation, democracy and solidarity.
• These principles are fostered through the implication of three collectives with equal participation status: worker partners (owners of the cooperative with capital asset), collaborating partners (representatives from cooperatives and non-cooperative companies and other institutions), and enrolled students (over three thousand currently).
• As a university with a clear social vocation, Mondragon University is focused on developing suitable employment in society through its educational model and original view of research that is geared to the needs of businesses building cooperatives by promoting students’ economic capacity and ability to self-finance which enables them to combine their studies and real-time cooperative-based projects with market impact.
• As a private institution, Mondragon cooperatives have embraced the concept of sustainability as a center principle in all activities. The structure of Mondragon University provides an umbrella for a robust network of support organizations such as those in technology research (cooperative think tanks and laboratories – examples: IKERLAN, IDEKO and LORTEK)  -three internationally renowned technology centers that serve as core pillars of Mondragon University’s structure, the incubator, SAIOLAN Business Centre, and student cooperative, ALECOP.
• The Mondragon Cooperative Group fields over twelve technology laboratory cooperatives who have amassed more than 900 patents.