Publications

Developing an Operational Definition of the Social Economy

Len Arthur, Molly Scott Cato, Tom Keenoy, Russell Smith

The social economy has attracted considerable rhetorical and policy interest in recent years. And yet, it seems that many of its most ardent supporters are not clear about what it is. It resembles, as the voluntary sector which forms a part of it was once called ‘a loose and baggy monster’. This is problematic, since in order to develop and argue for a certain economic sector we must first be clear about what its boundaries are. This paper offers a pragmatic response to this definitional problem, one that was developed in connection with an audit of the social economy in Wales that the researchers are conducting.

The paper begins by presenting a summary of the various competing definitions and perceptions of the term ‘social economy’ that are prevalent in policy discourse and in academic writing. This is a necessary precursor to any empirical work in the field, and also has intrinsic merit in helping to elucidate what is distinctive and valuable about the particular kind of economic activity indicated by the term. The argument presented here is supported by a sister paper which addresses the theoretical problems with definitions of the social economy (Arthur et al., 2003) Since researchers must be clear about the boundaries of the sector they are analysing, they must have some means of determining which businesses fall within the defined sector and which not. Hence this paper proposes that, rather than a theoretical definition, an operational definition is developed, taking into account several dimensions of importance. For the various parts of the social economy researchers may then decide their position of interest on each dimension—for example whether the sector is publicly funded or not, or whether it has a mutualistic value system or not—and then select the businesses to be included accordingly.

This paper was published in Journal of Cooperative Studies, vol. 36/3 (no. 109), December 2003, pp. 163-89. A full copy of the paper (in Adobe Acrobat format) can be viewed/downloaded here.

The Pit and the Pendulum: A Cooperative Future for Work in the South Wales Valleys

Welcome to the world of work! Few areas of this country could have been so moulded to suit the needs of the working world than the Valleys of South Wales, whose prosperity rose and fell in response to the world economy’s demand for its commodity: coal. The Valleys are now seen as an economic basket-case worthy of pity and policy titbits. The image of the scrapheap that emerges so frequently in discussions of regions that have suffered from what economists euphemistically describe as ‘industrial restructuring’ is apt. Like exhausted or broken machine parts that no longer fit, men are cast aside. Because they have no use to the machine they are accorded no value. Yet people continue to spend their lives in the Valleys, where children are born and raised, and the human spirit thrives as much as it does in the more prosperous parts of the country.

The Pit and the Pendulum opens up the black box of employment policy in this area of severe and persistent unemployment. Its analysis uses a multidiscplinary approach. Molly Scott Cato is an economist by training but she brings to her work the convictions of a social critic and it is on the basis of these convictions that she is able to map out the uses and limitations of economic analyses. Indeed, it is the way in which Molly manages the creative tension between her values and her knowledge of economics that gives her book its distinctive character and purpose.

This book makes a contribution to the social science of economic behaviour, a field which is undergoing something of a renaissance characterised by a return to the intentions of the classical critiques of Durkheim, Marx, Simmel and Polanyi. An example is found in the exploration of the dearth of entrepreneurship in the Valleys, which is explained in cultural terms with evidence from a social survey of local workers. Rather than a self-centred, individualist model of economic success, an associationist model along the lines of Tower Colliery is far more likely to attract the energy and commitment of local people. Thus the book concludes that policy-making should be shaped by local values and that in the case of the Valleys this constitutes a powerful case for cooperative employment creation.

The Meanings of ‘Worker Control’ in the Knowledge Economy: A Case Study

Tom Keenoy (King's College, London), Len Arthur (UWIC, Cardiff), Peter Anthony (King's College, London) and Russell Smith (UWIC, Cardiff)

We address two central themes: the nature and limits of democracy in a work organisation. Contemporary models of employee empowerment tend to focus on managerially initiated practices such as team-working or employee share ownership. In contrast, our research is on a remarkably successful co-operatively owned mine, Tower Colliery in South Wales, founded through an employee buy-out in 1995. Since then Tower has expanded production in an increasingly competitive market, doubled employment, opened up new markets, made a very significant contribution to the local economy and overcome production difficulties which would have shut down a privately owned enterprise. Perhaps most remarkably of all, all this has been achieved through a management process based on direct democracy. After a brief contextualization, the paper explores a number of substantive issues and theoretical debates: management authority and work organisation in the context of worker control; the nature of the employment relationship under worker control; and the complex role of the union in a worker co-operative. The paper also explores some of the theoretical implications of the Tower experience for the contemporary debates about new forms of organisation; empowerment; team-working; and the role of trade unions in the 21st century.

This paper was presented to the Academy of Management Conference. A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

The employment relationship, trade unions and employee ownership: the five year experience of Tower Colliery

Len Arthur (UWIC, Cardiff), Tom Keenoy (King's College, London), Russell Smith (UWIC, Cardiff) and Peter Anthony (King's College, London)

Tower Colliery is the last deep mine in the South Wales coalfield. It is situated to the extreme North of the coalfield, just outside of Hirwaun and just above the watershed of the rivers Neath and Cynon. It is in an area where the hard coal anthracite seams start. However, unlike the other mines and despite a vote to accept the closure, a campaign was started by the NUM members at Tower to use the new ability to purchase coalmines to organise an employee buyout and establish a workers cooperative. the mine became the property of the workers from January 1st 1995. This paper concentrates on the experience of the worker cooperative since that time. In overall terms the cooperative has been remarkably successful. When it came into being it employed just over 230, employment now hovers around 400 with just under 300 as full members of the cooperative and others employed in security, an recently acquired bagging plant and contractors. Coal production was around 380k tonnes per year the current output stands at 600k tonnes per year. The Coal Board claimed the mine was uneconomical: the cooperative has regularly made annual profits of £4m. Possibly the biggest success is that the co-operative mine has survived for 6 years as a business and still has a future. It is the intention of the paper to present the initial findings of our analysis of the operation of the cooperative, to evaluate the success, and to also explore some of the ambiguities, tensions and creativity that have characterised the last 6 years. Cooperative production straddling the divide between employee ownership and control and operating within a framework dominated by capitalist market relations is somewhat predictably in an ambiguous situation: providing both a practical challenge to the status quo while also affirming it. Our analysis of Tower Colliery has found this ambiguity to be a constant theme of the experience of those in the cooperative and has produced theoretical and conceptual enigmas for us as researchers.

A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

People versus pounds: the prospects for radicalism in the UK social economy.

Len Arthur (UWIC, Cardiff), Tom Keenoy (King’s College, London), Russell Smith (UWIC, Cardiff), Molly Scott Cato (UWIC, Cardiff) and Peter Anthony (King’s College, London)

The paper examines the tensions that can be identified in the European and in particularly the UK Labour Government’s policy approach to the social economy and social enterprise. A policy trajectory toward market integration and the private sector practice that eschews models of ‘bottom up’ ownership and control is identified. Possibilities of a radical opposition this trend within the social economy, both conceptually and in practice, are explored. A framework drawn from the social movement sociology using concepts of socially produced boundaries and space is used together with recent evidence from the UK social economy. Elements of a radical trajectory can be seen in ‘doing – it – ourselves’ practice; aims and democratic forms of ownership and control. It is suggested that in combination they can achieve incremental, but radical social outcomes.

Draft Paper for Crises conference on Innovation and Social Transformation at Montreal University November 11th – 12th 2004. A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Capital anchoring and Cooperative Ownership: The Reality of the Operation of a Cooperative Enterprise in a Globalising Economy.

Len Arthur (UWIC Cardiff), Tom Keenoy (King’s College London), Russell Smith (UWIC Cardiff) and Peter Anthony (King’s College London)

This paper proposes that the notion of ‘capital anchoring’ at the regional level, through employee ownership and community enterprise, has a key part to play in achieving the sustainable growth of indigenous capital and acts as a means of challenging the processes of globalisation. The argument developed is that a cooperative enterprise, while operating within the legal framework of the orthodox conception of business does, through its practice, challenge the conventional idea of ownership and the employment relationship as members of a cooperative are conjointly both owners and employees within the organisation. The reality of the operation of cooperatives is that despite de jure private ownership on the part of individuals, there is a de facto social ownership based upon democratic decision making structures internally and strong ties with the local community externally. This contention is supported by empirical work based on the first five years experience of the Tower Colliery workers’ cooperative, in South Wales.

This paper was presented to the 16th Annual Employment Research Unit Conference: Politics, Public Policy and the Employment Relationship, held at Cardiff Business School, September 10-11th 2001. A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Your Own Backyard

Len Arthur, Molly Scott Cato, Tom Keenoy, and Russell Smith

Proponents of Corporate Social Responsibility as a means of improving the behaviour of the corporate sector often assume that the corporations will improve their behaviour because of the damage to their brand image of actions considered reprehensible by the majority of consumers (the example of Shell in Nigeria and during the crisis over Brent Spar is often cited as an example). However, in the late phase of capitalism consolidation and frequent changes in the ownership of brands means that consumers can really have little idea about the nature of the company that manufactured any particular good they purchase. Consumers have also grown cynical after years of ‘greenwash’ and phoney claims to social values from corporations.

We would argue that two factors that have a genuine impact on the standards of behaviour of corporations are scale and distance. The greater the distance between producers and consumers the lower the level of commitment to social responsibility. This distance could be geographical, as in the example of the environmental catastrophe at Bhopal, or cultural, as in the Nike’s Indonesian sweatshops and the race to the bottom in terms of labour standards. The scale of vertically and horizontally diversified corporations today means that there is little knowledge in one part of the business about what other parts of it are doing, and this makes any genuine responsibility more difficult to achieve. Globalisation and consolidation are continually increases these problems of distance and scale while corporations pay lip-service to CSR.

This paper was presented at the conference: Corporate Social Responsibility: Thought and Practice, University of Glamorgan Business School, 23-24 September, 2004 A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Cooperative production – a contentious social space?

Len Arthur (UWIC, Cardiff), Tom Keenoy (King’s College, London), Russell Smith (UWIC, Cardiff), Molly Scott Cato (UWIC, Cardiff) and Peter Anthony (King’s College, London)

Workers cooperatives and mutual organisations have received relatively little attention within work and employment related discourses. This is despite a revival of interest and a long history of cycles of interest. This paper draws on four years of research at a cooperatively owned mine in South Wales – Tower Colliery is the last deep mine in the area. The argument is that worker cooperatives are significantly different to typical work organisation, in that they are social movements and research into their experience can make a relevant contribution to the discourses of work and the sociology of social movements.

The paper will present an analysis of how the interactive social space has been changed by the redistribution of power and authority to the employees – the micro actors. The analytical framework draws upon sociological traditions as synthesised in Archer’s work (1996) on culture and Mouzelis (1995) on patterns of social interaction. Reference will be made to social movement concepts and social skills as identified by Fligstein (2001). It will be argued that the changed democratic based power relationships has not only created a different social space but that the difference is such, that it can be seen to amount to an alternative social movement, that is a mode of transgressive contention (Mcadam et al 2001), whilst at the same time surviving as a mainstream economic organisation. We will propose a concept of ‘deviant mainstreaming’ as possible way of capturing the generic social processes at the cooperative.

The paper was presented at the 22nd Annual International Labour Process Conference in Amsterdam, 5-7 April 2004. A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Forward to the Past: Teamworking as a Job Property Right

Tom Keenoy, Len Arthur, Peter Anthony, Russell Smith and Molly Scott Cato (King’s College, London & UWIC, Cardiff)

The paper draws on 3 years fieldwork at Tower Colliery (which became a worker-owned co-operative in 1995) to explore an alternative form of contemporary ‘teamwork’. We will argue that – in contrast to the conventional managerialist conception of 'teamworking' – “effective” teamwork resides in embedding ‘ownership’ of work processes in both the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘real’ aspects of the employment relationship.

John Commons’ (1970/1950) – a welfare economist who argued that negotiation lies at the core of just civil society – developed the notion of ‘job property rights’ as the equivalent of ‘the rights of private property’ in analysing union behaviour in job regulation. We will extend his argument to account for the legitimacy of teamworking in a ‘co-operative employment relationship’. In the process, we will raise issues (for teamworking) about authority; responsibility; team-processes (Tower have elected 'shift captains'); and worker-management relationships.

Commons, J.R. (1970/1950) The Economics of Collective Action, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Management Authority in a Worker Cooperative: The Case of Tower Colliery

Peter Anthony, Tom Keenoy (King’s College, London); Len Arthur, Russell Smith (University of Wales Institute, Cardiff)

The South Wales coalfield has long enjoyed a deep-rooted debate over the political direction and control of industry and the influence to be accorded to workers. As part of the Conservative government’s wider programme of pit closures, Tower Colliery was closed in 1994. The workers, led by the local union branch, organized a buyout and the colliery subsequently reopened as a cooperative, worker-owned enterprise.

The paper will provide a brief but essential historical context and detail the present forms of managerial control at Tower as a way into the discussion of a number of arguments which emerge from philosophical concepts of authority and their contentious relevance to industrial organization. Our central question concerns how far established philosophical traditions are appropriate to an understanding of management processes in a successful, competitive and profitable ‘anti-capitalist’ undertaking operating in a market economy.

This paper was presented to the Developing the Philsophy of Management conference at St. Anne’s College Oxford in June 2002. A full version of the paper is available here in Adobe Acrobat format.