This report focuses on Italy’s experiences with worker-recuperated enterprises as worker buyouts (WBOs). They have been facilitated by Italy’s extensive cooperative, business, and labour legislation and enabling environment, spearheaded by its Legge Marcora (Marcora Law) policy and funding framework - a unique collaboration for business rescues and saving jobs between workers, the state, and the cooperative movement. Read More
This article aims to provide a political, economic and social overview of the emergence and establishment of ERTs in Argentina over the past two decades. In addition, the legal and institutional preconditions that significantly encourage, limit and determine the scope of worker cooperatives will be analyzed. Read More
The paper deals with the mediating role of immaterial satisfaction between substantive organizational substantive features, defined as resources by on-the-job autonomy, involvement, teamwork and workload pressure, and organizational performance, defined in terms of improvements in product quality and innovation. Read More
This paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first empirical investigation into the role of different types of enterprises in the creation of social trust. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the population of the Italian Province of Trento in March 2011, we find that cooperatives are the only type of enterprise where the work environment fosters the social trust of workers. Read More
The paper offers a contribution to the understanding of the relations between incentives, satisfaction and performance of employees in social enterprises. It starts by criticizing the general hypotheses of the principal-agent theory and especially that employee satisfaction is determined exclusively by the level of salary received. Read More
Italian worker cooperatives tend to accumulate a high share of profits in indivisible reserves, a fund that is unavailable and cannot be appropriated by members. The research investigates the reasons for this practice, after discussing the most frequently used interpretations. The hypothesis that is formulated is that indivisible reserves play an important role in protecting the stability of employment in cooperatives. Read More