Mondragon’s former president Josu Ugarte was recently interviewed for the Great Transition Initiative. We think this is one of the most relevant summaries of Mondragon available. We also appreciate the challenge and potential summed up in the last exchange:
What is the future of large, global cooperatives? Is the Mondragon story unique or replicable?
The Basque roots of Mondragon remain a powerful force in the identity, mission, and purpose of the federation. Exporting the model faces a host of cultural and sociological barriers, especially attracting executives and managers who understand and embrace the values of coops and are willing to work for salaries usually well below what they could earn in conventional profit-driven, shareholder-controlled enterprises. But coops offer many advantages to workers, from rising share prices to a more secure retirement package. The barriers to building a strong coop culture in operations around the world are formidable. But the promise of coops as global force for solidarity, democracy, and economic equality remains a powerful incentive to expand the coop model worldwide.
Read the interview, Worker Cooperatives in a Globalizing World, via the Great Transition Initiative.