IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecoind/v32y2011i2p199-222.html

Management training as a source of perceived competitive advantage: The Mondragon Cooperative Group case

Author

Listed:
  • Imanol Basterretxea

    (University of the Basque Country, Spain, imanol.basterretxea@ehu.es)

  • Eneka Albizu

    (University of the Basque Country, Spain)

Abstract

The academic literature argues that managers, with their resources and capabilities, constitute a source of competitive advantage for companies, but that cooperatives generally have difficulties attracting and retaining competent managers. The present study examines the special efforts made in the creation and development of cooperative managers via corporate training centres in the Mondragon Cooperative Group. The fieldwork that supports this research is a qualitative study based on a series of in-depth interviews with 12 people in charge of Mondragon’s training structure. This study confirms that Mondragon’s cooperatives have overcome the difficulties common to other cooperatives in attracting and retaining valuable managers. The study also confirmed that Mondragon’s management training policy, based on its corporate training centres, is internally perceived as a source of competitive advantages to the cooperatives in the attraction, development and retention of managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Imanol Basterretxea & Eneka Albizu, 2011. "Management training as a source of perceived competitive advantage: The Mondragon Cooperative Group case," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 32(2), pages 199-222, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:32:y:2011:i:2:p:199-222
    DOI: 10.1177/0143831X10377809
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X10377809
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0143831X10377809?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. Melissa Moye, 1993. "Mondragon: Adapting Co-operative Structures to Meet the Demands of a Changing Environment," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 14(2), pages 251-276, May.
    2. Peter Abell, 1990. "Supporting Industrial Cooperatives in Developing Countries: Some Tanzanian Experiences," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 11(4), pages 483-504, November.
    3. Roger Spear & Chris Cornforth & Mike Aiken, 2009. "The Governance Challenges Of Social Enterprises: Evidence From A Uk Empirical Study," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 80(2), pages 247-273, June.
    4. Christina A. Clamp, 2000. "The Internationalization of Mondragon," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(4), pages 557-577, December.
    5. Yasemin Y. Kor, 2003. "Experience-Based Top Management Team Competence and Sustained Growth," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(6), pages 707-719, December.
    6. Roger Spear, 2004. "Governance in Democratic Member‐Based Organisations," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 33-60, March.
    7. Mark A. Lutz, 1997. "The Mondragon co‐operative complex: an application of Kantian ethics to social economics," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 24(12), pages 1404-1421, December.
    8. Chnstopher B. Meek & Warner P. Woodworth, 1990. "Technical Training and EnterpRse: Mondragon's Educational System and its Implications for other Cooperatives," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 11(4), pages 505-528, November.
    9. Chris Cornforth, 2004. "The Governance of cooperatives and mutual associations: a paradox perspective," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 11-32, March.
    10. Moses Acquaah, 2003. "Corporate Management, Industry Competition and the Sustainability of Firm Abnormal Profitability," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 7(1), pages 57-85, March.
    11. Chris Cornforth & Alan Thomas, 1990. "Cooperative Development: Barriers, Support Structures and Cultural Factors," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 11(4), pages 451-461, November.
    12. Frédérique Bataille‐Chedotel & France Huntzinger, 2004. "Faces of Governance of Production Cooperatives: An Exploratory Study of Ten French Cooperatives," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 89-111, March.
    13. Mahoney, Joseph T., 1995. "The management of resources and the resource of management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 91-101, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kévin Pastier, 2024. "Beyond democratic degeneration, horizontal and liberated organization? The agonistic approach of a Belgian food co-op," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 45(4), pages 1325-1349, November.
    2. Anjel Errasti, 2015. "Mondragon’s Chinese subsidiaries: Coopitalist multinationals in practice," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 36(3), pages 479-499, August.
    3. Juliette Summers & Shiona Chillas, 2021. "Working in employee-owned companies: The role of economic democracy skills," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 42(4), pages 1029-1051, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Silvia Sacchetti & Ermanno Tortia, 2012. "The internal and external governance of cooperatives: the effective membership and consistency of value," AICCON Working Papers 111-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    2. Stéphane Jaumier, 2016. "Preventing chiefs from being chiefs: An ethnography of a co-operative sheet-metal factory," Post-Print hal-01366601, HAL.
    3. Imanol Basterretxea & Chris Cornforth & Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2022. "Corporate governance as a key aspect in the failure of worker cooperatives," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 362-387, February.
    4. Stéphane Jaumier, 2016. "Preventing chiefs from being chiefs: An ethnography of a co-operative sheet-metal factory," Grenoble Ecole de Management (Post-Print) hal-01366601, HAL.
    5. Pettus, Michael L. & Kor, Yasemin Y. & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2007. "A Theory of Change in Turbulent Environments: The Sequencing of Dynamic Capabilities Following Industry Deregulation," Working Papers 07-0100, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    6. Jasper Grashuis & Celina Martinez‐Georges, 2026. "Adoption of nontraditional governance characteristics in US farmer cooperatives," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 232-247, January.
    7. Michael Kopel & Marco Marini, 2014. "Erratum to: Strategic delegation in consumer cooperatives under mixed oligopoly," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 297-297, November.
    8. Saskia Crucke & Adelien Decramer, 2016. "The Development of a Measurement Instrument for the Organizational Performance of Social Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-30, February.
    9. Marco A. MARINI & Paolo POLIDORI & Desiree TEOBALDELLI & Alberto ZEVI, 2015. "Welfare Enhancing Coordination In Consumer Cooperatives Under Mixed Oligopoly," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 86(3), pages 505-527, September.
    10. Fariss–Terry Mousa & Richard Reed, 2013. "The Impact of Slack Resources on High–Tech IPOs," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(5), pages 1123-1147, September.
    11. Silvia Sacchetti & Ermanno C. Tortia, 2013. "The Internal and External Governance of Cooperatives: Membership and Consistency of Values," Euricse Working Papers 1362, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).
    12. Inocencia Mª Martínez‐León & Isabel Olmedo‐Cifuentes & Jorge Luis Sánchez‐Navarro & Narciso Arcas‐Lario, 2025. "Transformational leadership and performance in social economy entities: The moderating effect of board gender diversity," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 96(4), pages 793-819, December.
    13. Mr. Wim Fonteyne, 2007. "Cooperative Banks in Europe—Policy Issues," IMF Working Papers 2007/159, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Anjel Errasti, 2015. "Mondragon’s Chinese subsidiaries: Coopitalist multinationals in practice," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 36(3), pages 479-499, August.
    15. Linda Shaw, 2006. "Overview of Corporate Governance Issues for Co-operatives," World Bank Publications - Reports 26128, The World Bank Group.
    16. Kor, Yasemin Y. & Mahoney, Joseph T. & Michael, Steven C., 2005. "Resources, Capabilities and Entrepreneurial Perceptions," Working Papers 05-0120, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    17. Justine Monique Florine Ballon & Thomas Blondeel & Marius Chevallier & Orville Pletschette, 2023. "Bringing democracy to life in cooperatives: ongoing experiments. The cases of Railcoop and SmartCoop," Post-Print hal-04576634, HAL.
    18. Kwame Ohene Djan & Roy Mersland, 2022. "Are NGOs and cooperatives similar or different? A global survey using microfinance data," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 26(2), pages 641-683, June.
    19. Foss, Nicolai J. & Klein, Peter G. & Kor, Yasemin Y. & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2006. "Entrepreneurship, Subjectivism, and the Resource-Based View: Towards a New Synthesis," Working Papers 06-0121, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    20. Chris Mason & Bob Doherty, 2016. "A Fair Trade-off? Paradoxes in the Governance of Fair-trade Social Enterprises," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 451-469, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:32:y:2011:i:2:p:199-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ekhist.uu.se/english.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.