Loose Governance in Action: Tinkering Around in a Shrinking City

Worker-owned cooperatives as urban economic development.

“…Cleveland is a strong choice for research in this project because existing cooperative development projects have attracted significant attention in existing academic literature (Alperovitz, 2011;Song, 2016;Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017).…”

“…The key link is between national sectors of expanding public activity and procurement, on the one hand, and a new local economic entity, on the other, that "democratizes" ownership and is deeply anchored in the community (Alperovitz, Williamson, & Howard, 2011 (Alperovitz, 2011;Imbroscio, 2010;Sutton, 2019). For a number of scholars, the efforts underway in Cleveland are examples of cities doing exactly thatexperimenting with policymaking approaches in new, exciting ways to achieve progressive policy goals that traditional approaches may not achieve (Song, 2016;Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017;Casper-Futterman, 2011). The approach by government officials in Cleveland is seen as unique, with policymakers "engaging within networked governance to help citizens uncover and bridge resources so that they may pursue new ideas in an equitable, democratic, and socially beneficial way" (Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017, pg.…”

“…Once I understood what a case study could accomplish, I needed to determine whether it fit the needs for the study in terms of filling in gaps in existing literature. Case studies are common within the niche of academic research focusing on worker-owned cooperatives, and precedent certainly existed for pursuing in-depth exploration of specific cases (Ranis, 2016;Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017;Adeler, 2014). To really answer the research questions posed in the previous section, a qualitative method which could respond to answers dependent on the shifting reality and variety of perspectives likely to be found among any pool of participants was necessary.…”

“…Academics have also explored the specifics of support for wide selections of worker-owned cooperatives both in the United States and other countries, even using examples of different cities to create typologies for different policy approaches (Caruana & Srnec, 2013;Camou, 2016). Researchers have turned their attention towards Cleveland to discuss how cooperatives represent specific policy approaches on topics like the relationship between government and the private sector, as well as building sustainable enterprises (Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017;Song, 2016). This dissertation takes the existing knowledge of Cleveland much further, detailing specific policies of support for cooperatives including the details of what support has (and has not) been available to Evergreen and worker-owned firms in general.…”

“…cooperative-based economic development are beginning to manifest and should be studied for what they are.The existing literature does not abandon the cases completely-there are case studies of the projects in Cleveland that focus on questions of governance or planning, but they only provide limited details about policies or the contextual political climate in the city(Song, 2016;Zingale, Samanta, & West, 2017). In existing literature, the Evergreen Cooperatives example is used to explain a larger concept of governance strategies but leaves some major unanswered questions about the motivation behind the city government's involvement, the perspectives of people knowledgeable about the project, and the political impact of these initiatives.…”