Success or setback? Thriving cooperative's dilemma

Author(s)

Raquel Duaibs

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2016-03-29

Examining board members

Márcia de Paula Leite; Marcio Pochmann; Lorena Holzmann; Fabio Jose Bechara Sanchez; Angela Maria Carneiro Araújo

• Advisor: Márcia de Paula Leite

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate productive internationalization by Italian cooperatives, defined by the strategy of starting companies in other countries, a situation that have been disseminating systematically. Our analysis showed that this process has been taking place sporadically since the 1960s, but gained momentum after the economic crisis that erupted in 2008, when cooperative workers and cooperative development agencies noticed enterprises that had previously internationalized could overcome crises more easily than those who have focused only on the Italian market. The issue is that only the headquarter is a cooperative, and the other group companies are constituted as publicly traded corporations. In this context, the branches become a foreign body to the cooperative universe and eventually dissolve the solidarity and democratic principles thay that prevail on cooperative members because it minimizes cooperative convictions and intensifies the division between capital and labor, clearly admiting ample exploitation of wage labor. As an exemplary model of this productive internationalization process, we elected an industrial production cooperative for our case study, which in 2016 has 77 projects spread over 29 countries, with only the parent company idem as a cooperative (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/10324-2 - Success or setback? The dilemma of cooperatives to thrive.
• Grantee: Raquel Duaibs Aguiar Lorente
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate