Asklemmy

44864 readers

1597 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Anyone know any good books about cooperatives & other collaborative business models? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There are libraries full of books written about hierarchical business methods, practices, and models. I'm curious to learn more about the practical application of alternative business models.

I'm looking for history books that showcase the good, the bad, and the ugly of collaborative business models. When, where, and how did some succeed? When, where, and how did some fail?

I'm looking for analysis that compare and contrast hierarchical and non-hierarchical businesses directly via metrics like failure rate, employee turnover, community impact, annualized growth, etc. and indirectly by investigating challenges and trade-offs unique to different organizational structures.

Does anyone know any good books about cooperatives?

top 5 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I think there are some books about the Mondragon Cooperative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Thanks for the suggestion! On the surface it looks like such a cool organization, I picked up a copy of William & Kathleen Whyte's Making Mondragon, I'm looking forward to reading it after the holidays.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

The only thing I've read that comes close was Reinventing Organisations which was amazing but maybe not quite on target for youyou

https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago

Not about cooperatives but maybe about the way to run them: I would recommend the book "We the people" about sociocracy.

Buck, John Jr, and Sharon Villines. We the People. Washington, DC: Sociocracy.Info Press, 2007.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

I read Democracy At Work by Richard Wolff a decade ago. It's way more lightweight than what you're asking for, but it's not a rah rah all-positive book. It lays out the problem of capitalist organization, and how employee ownership can solve problems for workers.

https://www.democracyatwork.info/

Also look into resources from https://www.usworker.coop/home/

If you reach out to people in those organizations, they may have access to some more hardcore economic papers that you're looking for.