Power and Communication in Worker Cooperatives

Abstract

Technical communication research has critically engaged with organizational trends toward flattened organizations like networks, horizontal arrangements, and adhocracies, assemblages that hybridize top-down management in favor of autonomous groups. There has been no engagement with a related but distinct trend: worker cooperatives. Co-ops promise similar advantages but are distinct as they claim to deliver what flat organizations promise: access to governance, empowerment, and autonomy. In this article, I survey literature on flattened organizations, apply technical communication theory to account for cooperative communication, and conclude with an analysis from a qualitative study at a cooperative site.

“Coworking Is About Community”: But What Is “Community” in Coworking?

“…Contractors seek coworking spaces for various reasons, including their need to have personal contacts (Gerdenitsch et al, 2016; Groot, 2013; Spinuzzi, 2012), access to shared infrastructure and resources (Bouncken, Clauß, & Reuschl, 2016; Capdevila, 2014; Clifton, Crick, & Fuzi, 2012; Kojo & Neonen, 2016, 2017; Merkel, 2015), and networking opportunities with potential clients, subcontractors, and other collaborators (Capdevila, 2014; Groot, 2013; Kubátová, 2014; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte & Isaac, 2016; Liimatainen, 2015; Rus & Orel, 2015; Waters-Lynch & Potts, 2017). Some of these needs have also been discussed in adjacent cases such as nomadic and contingent work (Ciolfi & Carvalho, 2014; Connelly & Gallagher, 2004; Czarniawska, 2013; Gandini, 2016b; Liegl, 2014; Rossitto, Bogdan, & Severinson-Eklundh, 2013; Su & Mark, 2008) and other forms of distributed work (Avdikos & Kalogeresis, 2017; Heckscher & Carré, 2006), including forms that have been examined in the professional communication literature (Carradini, 2018; Edenfield, 2017; Fraiberg, 2017; Lauren & Pigg, 2016; Pigg et al, 2014; Spinuzzi, 2007, 2014).…”

“…Consequently, workers often seek new ways to form communities and to collaborate within them. Research in rhetoric and professional communication has explored these themes, not only in coworking spaces (Spinuzzi, 2012) but also in cooperative (Edenfield, 2017), social collective (Pigg et al, 2014), independent and self-promotional (Carradini, 2018; Lauren & Pigg, 2016; Spinuzzi, 2014), and entrepreneurial (Fraiberg, 2017) work environments. This focus on distributed work is critical in understanding changes to professional communication, a knowledge work field that not only orchestrates communicative work but has experienced remarkable changes in the organization, production, and content of its own work (e.g., Andersen, 2014; Ferro & Zachry, 2014).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility of Financial Cooperatives: A Multi-Level Analysis

“…Cooperatives are a form of organization that differs from traditional businesses in a number of ways [5,29,30]. Among other things, a cooperative is owned and controlled by the bearers of the economic, social, or cultural needs that it aims to satisfy [25].…”

What Is a Workplace? Principles for Bounding Case Studies of Genres, Processes, Objects, and Organizations

“…B. Teston (2009) studied a hospital’s recurring Tumor Board meeting. Others have studied suborganization units via more restricted boundaries: emergency medical technicians (Angeli, 2015), Scrum teams (Friess, 2019), high-tech initiatives (Fraiberg, 2021), and worker cooperatives (Edenfield, 2017). And still other studies examine specific roles within and across institutions, including custodians (Marotta, 2021), Black entrepreneurs (Jones, 2017), international entrepreneurs (Williams et al, 2016), professional writers (Brandt, 2005), and social workers (Lillis et al, 2020).…”