Doctoral Dissertation Research: Worker-Recovered Businesses and Workplace Inequality

本项目探讨组织如何在工作场所构建和维护平等。尽管将工作场所作为社会不平等产生和再现的场所的研究做出了重要贡献，但最近的学术研究已经开始考虑积极主动地解决工作场所不平等问题，强调需要对工作场所作为社会变革的潜在场所进行更多研究。本项目考察了工人合作社作为解决持续存在的工作场所不平等现象的手段的可能性和局限性。该项目将记录和解释在工作场所创造更公平的权力和资源分配的努力，以及这些努力对替代性工作场所组织（如合作社）和传统组织的影响。为了研究工作组织如何以及是否能够主动减少不平等现象，本项目研究了阿根廷工人恢复企业中的工作场所不平等现象，这些企业已从私营企业转变为工人控制的合作社。这些企业与传统企业一样提供商品和服务，但在不同的所有权安排、权力结构和运营逻辑下运作。具体而言，本项目将分析四家服务行业工人康复企业在薪酬、职权、参与和工作流程方面的组织实践。前三家——诊所、酒店和学校——是“第一代”工人恢复的企业。我们将通过深入访谈和历史研究来研究各世界银行的组织历史。这些案例的目的是审查在较长时期内重新分配权力和资源的努力。这三种情况将由第四种更年轻的组织在早期过渡阶段补充。本案例的目的是观察组织实践在实时和空间中出现的构建过程。总之，对四个实地地点的分析应突出工人恢复的企业和合作社在改变工作场所权力和权威关系方面的问题和前景。

This project examines how organizations construct and maintain equality in the workplace. Despite the important contributions made by studies examining the workplace as a site where social inequalities are produced and reproduced, recent scholarship has begun to consider proactive efforts to address workplace inequality, highlighting the need for more research on the workplace as a potential site of social change. This project examines the possibilities and limitations of worker cooperatives as a means of addressing persistent workplace inequalities. The project will document and explain efforts to create more equitable distributions of power and resources in the workplace and the implications these efforts have in alternative workplace organizations (like cooperatives) and conventional organizations. To examine how and whether work organizations can proactively reduce inequality, this project examines workplace inequality in worker-recovered businesses in Argentina, companies that have been converted from privately-owned enterprises into worker-controlled cooperatives. These businesses provide goods and services like their traditional counterparts, but operate under a different ownership arrangement, authority structure and operating logic. Concretely, this project will analyze organizational practices around pay, authority, participation and work processes used by four worker-recovered businesses operating in the service sector. The first three -a health clinic, hotel and school - are "first generation" worker-recovered businesses. We will study the organizational history of each WRB by conducting in-depth interviews and historical research. The purpose of these cases is to examine efforts to redistribute power and resources over a longer period of time. These three cases will be supplemented by a fourth much younger organizations in an early transition stage. The aim of this case is to observe the construction of organizational practices as they emerge in real time and space. Together, the analysis of the four field sites should highlight the problems and prospects of worker-recovered businesses and cooperatives for altering workplace power and authority relationships.