Worker Cooperatives - An Economic Model: The Labor-managed Firm

An Economic Model: The Labor-managed Firm

Economists have modeled the worker cooperative as a firm in which labor hires capital, rather than capital hiring labor as in a conventional firm. The classic theoretical contributions of such a “labor managed firm” (LMF) model are due to Benjamin Ward and Jaroslav Vanek.

In the neoclassical version, the objective of the LMF is to maximize not total profit, but rather income per worker. But such a scenario implies “perverse” behavior, such as laying off workers when output price rises so as to divide increased profits among fewer members. Evidence supporting such behavior is lacking however; a review of the empirical economics literature is found in Bonin, Jones, and Putterman But alternative behavioral models have been proposed. Peter Law examined LMFs that value employment as well as income. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen examined pay according to work and according to need. Nobel Laureate James Meade examined behavior of an “inegalitarian” LMF.

Generally, the evidence indicates that worker cooperatives have higher productivity than conventional companies although this difference may be modest in size. Economists have explained clustering of worker coops through leagues or “supporting structures” Regions where large clusters of worker cooperatives are found supported by leagues include Mondragón, in the Basque Region of Spain, home of Mondragón Cooperative Corporation and in Italy, particularly Emilia-Romagna. Leagues provide various kinds of scale economies to make coops viable. But as leagues need coops to start them the result is a chicken or egg problem that helps explain why few coops get started.