Imanol Basterretxea

Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea | UPV/EHU · Departamento de Economía Financiera II

Mondragon cooperatives have used flexible employment, training and labour protection policies to deal with economic crises since the 1970s. These policies were also used in 2013 to alleviate the social consequences of the demise of their biggest industrial cooperative, Fagor Electrodomésticos. This article aims to analyze—through 40 interviews with...

The article analyses governance difficulties at Fagor Electrodomésticos, for decades the world’s largest industrial cooperative, and sheds light on how the cooperative model and governance might have contributed to the firm’s bankruptcy. The case study examines how the cooperative model influenced the speed and quality of decision making. The roles...

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate how the implementation of the inter-cooperation principle among Spanish machine-tool cooperatives helps them to coopete–collaborate with competitors, in their innovation and internationalization processes and achieve collaborative advantages. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a multi-case approach...

The article analyzes the interaction between employee ownership, HRM policies and practices, and HRM outcomes in what was the world's biggest industrial worker cooperative for decades, and now defunct, Fagor Electrodomésticos. Using longitudinal internal data and detailed interviews with key stakeholders, this paper sheds light on how employee owne...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mediating role of contracts and trust on the generation of product innovations stemming from buyer-supplier knowledge-sharing (KS) among the members of the supply chain. Together with the individual effects of trust and contracts, their joint effect is examined in order to determine whether these...

One of the many rationales advanced as justifying employee-owned enterprises is the idea that workers in such enterprises will be more engaged and more productive. We examine new evidence that reveals a mixed picture.

Whether ‘employee ownership’ takes the form of worker cooperatives, co-ownership or simply employee share ownership plans, there are normally high expectations that a range of positive outcomes will result. Yet many empirically based studies tend to find a much more complex picture. An influential segment of that empirical literature has posited th...

Purpose: This paper aims to discover the key elements for generating and protecting innovations based on the customer-supplier relationship in industrial sectors. Design/methodology/approach: This exploratory qualitative study was performed using semi-structured interviews with chief executive officers and innovation managers of 22 industrial firms...

Previous studies have focused on differences between western and Japanese approaches to supply chain network management techniques as regards NPD and relationship-specific ties. Based on in-depth interviews with senior managers at Volvo Trucks Brazil and two Spanish first tier suppliers, the aim of this research is to learn about the types of NPD c...

Previous studies have focused on differences between western and Japanese approaches to supply chain network management techniques as regards NPD and relationship-specific ties. Based on in-depth interviews with senior managers at Volvo Trucks Brazil and two Spanish first tier suppliers, the aim of this research is to learn about the types of NPD c...

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the impact of three types of embedded ties, namely, specialized complementary resources, idiosyncratic investments and knowledge sharing, on the innovation capacity of firms. It also examines the particularities of the machine-tool industry. Design/methodology/approach – The evaluation of the embedded buyer-sup...

A trend toward conventional managerialism has been identified in cooperative organizations, and it has been suggested that this is a symptom of the phenomenon of degeneration in cooperatives. Although managerial discourse is at the heart of the dominant managerialism, not much attention has been given to this trend. To fill this gap in the literatu...

The key question we intend to answer in this work is: To what extent does the interrelation between Mondragon’s training policy, its management tools for organizational flexibility and its financial inter-cooperation policy contributes to cope with economic crises? With this objective, the paper first offers some basic information and figures to g...

Employee-owned businesses have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest as possible ‘alternatives’ to the somewhat tarnished image of conventional investor-owned capitalist firms. Within the context of global economic crisis, such alternatives seem newly attractive. This is somewhat ironic because, for more than a century, academic literature on e...

The principal purpose of this study is to evaluate if management and innovation capabilities differ between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms (IOF). We do also want to analyze if those differences, in case they exist, cause different business performance levels. The fieldwork is based on a sample representative of the population of Basque indus...

The aim of this chapter is to ascertain the degree to which a training policy developed through corporate training centers is recognized as a source of competitive advantage for attracting, developing, and retaining valuable staff. The fieldwork is based on a survey of Human Resource (HR) managers from 66 cooperatives of the Spanish Mondragon coope...

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 vi...

El objeto de este trabajo es el de analizar la conexión entre las políticas de formación continua y de empleo en el grupo cooperativo Mondragón, examinando si dicha conexión puede conducir a la obtención de ventajas competitivas en épocas de recesión económica. Nuestra investigación pone de manifiesto que, en épocas de recesión, la formación genér...

En: Formación Profesional : revista europea Thessaloniki 2003, v.II, n. 29, mayo-agosto; p. 40-55 En el artículo se analizan experiencias desarrolladas para fomentar el espíritu emprendedor y la creación de empresas por parte de los alumnos en el ámbito concreto de la formación profesional en el País Vasco. En este sentido se profundiza en las mejo...

1. Einführung: Das Berufs- bildungswesen in Spanien und in der Autonomen Gemeinschaft des Basken- landes Derzeit wird das System der beruflichen Bildung in Spanien durch das Gesetz zur allgemeinen Neuordnung des Bildungs- wesens (LOGSE) aus dem Jahr 1990 gere- gelt. Mit dem Gesetz wird das neue Sy- stem der Berufsbildung in drei Ebenen unterteilt:...

This article sets out to examine the initiatives developed to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and the creation of enterprises by students in the specific context of vocational training in the Basque Country. The article therefore looks in depth at best practice in the centres of the Basque Autonomous Community, with the aim of disseminating first...

El fomento de la cultura emprendedora y el apoyo a la creación de empres constituye uno de los pilares sobre los que pivoca la política de empleo comunitaria. Las entidades dedicadas a la motivación del espíritu empresarial entre lapoblacióny apoyo a nuevos proyectos empresariales son bastante numerosas en Bizkaia. La actividad de estas entidades h...

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Este trabajo consta de dos partes esenciales. La primera de ellas la dedicamos a analizar y justificar la conveniencia de la intervención pública en la mejora de la ges-tión de las pequeñas empresas. Esta intervención se justifica por muchas y variadas razones. En primer lugar, las pequeñas empresas sufren importantes carencias de ges-tión que redu...