Narratives of cooperation, resilience and resistance: workers’ self-recovery in times of crisis

Abstract

Purpose Worker-recuperated enterprises have appeared in Europe with increasing frequency since 2008, following the Great Recession that hit the western economies. The purpose of this paper is to depict the phenomenon of worker-recuperated enterprises in Italy, focusing on two different types of business recovery, that of workers buyouts and that of recovered social spaces. The paper compares these on the basis of four analytical dimensions: resilience/resistance, relationship with the market, relationship with the territory and workplace democracy. Design/methodology/approach The corpus of the research is based on the cross-sectional analysis of workers’ narratives. These were collected, within a small sample of theoretically relevant cases, in order to retrace and analyse the path from the crisis of the former companies to establishment of the workers’ cooperatives and their social and economic features. Findings The collected narratives allowed for a multi-level comparison between different types of worker-recuperated enterprises, providing some insights on their emergence, their features in terms of resilience and resistance, their relationship with the market economy and their outcomes in terms of workplace democracy and support to employment. Originality/value Worker buyouts are gaining ground in Europe as an effective mechanism to oppose the fall of the employment rate in consequence of economic crises. This research intends to offer some data and arguments to the current international debate on the effectiveness of these mechanisms in coping with economic shocks and opening up to a sustainable and cooperative work-driven economy.

The resilience of the cooperative model: How do cooperatives deal with the COVID‐19 crisis?

“…Alternatively, when consumers are granted a fine price‐quality ratio (consumer cooperatives), they benefit from a higher quality of life. Understanding the positive externalities produced by cooperatives is evolving and refining as an increasing number of studies on the subject are published (Antonazzo, 2019; Muñoz et al, 2020). Our cases support the reasoning that cooperatives can enhance an economic system's resilience, making it more adaptive and capable of absorbing economic shocks.…”

The Role and Effectiveness of the Cooperative Business Model in Economic Recovery Strategy and Resilience Building Post-Covid-19: A Co-operative solution to disasters

“…Over 86% of the BCCs are in Québec, where there is a favourable social economy and co-operative development policy and support (Schwettmann 2014). Similar case studies are reported of WRC enterprises or worker buyouts in Italy and the rising practice of business transfers to or recovery of social spaces for employees in Europe (Antonazzo 2019), and other and conversion models in the USA where Social Economy and Solidarity laws have been adopted (Azzellini 2016;Ji 2020). In Italy the law was enacted to safeguard jobs, facilitating the recovery of companies in crisis through the establishment of workers' cooperatives among redundant employees.…”

Solidarity and social behaviour: how did this help communities to manage COVID-19 pandemic?

“…The 39 persons were contacted and interviewed. The adoption of a narrative approach in this research is methodologically consistent with an ontological and epistemological position that considers society made of meaningful actions and interpretation as the principal mode of enquiry (Antonazzo, 2019).…”