Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's basic principles and community-centered approach

¶ … Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's Basic Principles. Four main factors stand out: 1) the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's rapidly advancing concept of Work Environment, in accordance with Finance, 2) reasons people change and the nemesis which causes the ever-growing sense of improvement (perceived as advancement) in Retail, 3) Benefits of Autonomy and Self-Reliance in Industry, and 4) the self-determination from which all knowledge is based.

By all means, knowledge poses as the central theme by which these other elements find nourishment; without knowledge, a vital sense of comprehensive awareness, that on-top-of-it characteristic paramount to Mondragon would not exist as it stands.

Work Environment

The move from a mechanized and industrialized culture to a digital society has fundamentally modified what we consider these key-phrases: occupation, employment, profession, career, assignment, and vocation. What's nice, of course, is that advancement and promotional encouragement is much more easily attainable, and will continue to increase as the world's economy strengthens from quite a low that we all currently have. This loss of revenue the entire world has been recovering from, and really still facing, will be compensated soon enough.

Financially, the banking business of Caja Laboral, the insurance company Seguros Lagun Aro, and the Voluntary Social Welfare Body Lagun Aro, all had an asset fund totaling 4.2 billion euros by the end of 2009 (Eroski contigo, 2009). This was more than a year ago; hopefully even now they've still got it straightened all out and continue to prosper.

"The structural reorganization of the Mondragon cooperatives in 1987 and 1989 formalized the basic principles and delineated the legal regulations of the system. Through these meetings, the ten basic principles and the mission for Mondragon were defined."

Fast-forward twenty-plus years. The business setting has changed and is changing to an unprecedented degree.

Conventional cooperatives use accumulated capital for the private use of members. The MCC on the other hand uses accumulated capital for community benefit. The key distinguishing factor of the MCC is not co-operativism per se but the community base as recognized through social equity. Similarly, Gibson-Graham (2006) sees the MCC not as solely a classic cooperative project but as an ethical and political space of decision centered on community. That is, the cooperative form is the tool used to achieve a different end (Social enterprise and socio-legal structure: constructing alternative institutional spaces for economic development).

Regarding advancement, the future must always be regarded as better than the past; this is the significance of history: we then have a base from which to use as a guide. Salaries within any sector do not fluctuate too greatly, and there is always safety to be found in numbers (that is, numbers of other operational employees within any workforce). Therefore, the self-confidence and composure that comes from this assurance instills a sense of serenity and calmness that is inductive to production and progress. Several traditional work ethics and procedures have become entirely unidentifiable to young people entering the workforce of today. In fact, even folks resuming employment after some time off, even a few years, must learn an entirely new code of principles and behaviors.

The financial yield acquired through this structural reorganization of the Mondragon cooperatives will be used to incorporate long-term retirement, widowhood, and invalidity benefits, complementary to those offered by the Spanish social security system. "Caja Laboral, for its part, ended 2009 with 18.6 million euros of deposits in a year in which it granted loans worth 16.4 billion, mainly to household economies and small and medium-sized enterprises. Its extensive experience with the Corporation's Co-operatives enables it to offer SMEs services typical of large companies" (Tonder, 2003).

IV. Benefits of Industrial Autonomy and Self-Reliance

As is currently quite opportune, the convenience of this technological age resides with the broad availability that this technology brings with it. The Mondragon Corporation announced a Total Turnover of 16.8 billion euros in 2008; 6.5 billion corresponded to Industry, while 9 billion to Retail and 1.2 billion to the Finance arena. Evidently, it is quite accommodating; in fact, far more accommodating than ever before in history. This is definitely a benefit.

In a major sense, this enhanced sense of self-reliance brings a newly formed sense of job security with it. Both metaphorically and literally, this broadening sense of situational and environmental advancement will bring with it far more career availabilities, and even options with it. Moreover, this will invite training and build work experience at an unprecedented rate.

Our perception of loyalty and commitment has shifted and is shifting. The prolific and energetic focus is now placed on the self, as opposed to solely appeasing the supervisor in charge at the moment. Employment issues will be more focused inward, therefore, and the person who made any error will the only one accountable. Thus, if the mistake is not fixed, then that individual will face the heat as opposed to sneaking around and desperately being able to search for someone else to blame. This sensational pace of change is being catapulted by technological innovation and it offers exhilarating opportunities and stimulating options for conglomerates, corporations, and individuals to make working life more satisfactory, serene, untroubled, and expeditious.

The Industrial Outlook:

The Mondragon Corporation's companies "manufacture consumer goods, capital goods, industrial components, products and systems for construction, and services to business" (Eroski Contigo, 2009). Quite a vast collection.

"For their part, the 12 technology centres, with a workforce totaling 742 people and an overall budget of 53.7 million euros in

2009, continue to play a fundamental role in the development of the sectors in which they focus their activity" (2009 Mondragon

Yearly Report).

Surely upon entering any Mondragon office setting would seem similar to walking into an IKEA store or a Costco store and not getting easily sidetracked. But what would one come across in one of these affiliates?

In capital goods, MONDRAGON posted a turnover of 976 million euros in 2009, and is the leading Spanish manufacturer of chip removing (Danobat Group) and sheet metal forming (Fagor

Arrasate Group) machine tools. In the consumer goods sector, with sales totaling 1.5 billion euros, MONDRAGON produces white goods: refrigerators, washing machines, ovens, dishwashers, and boilers, under the brands Fagor, Brandt, and Mastercook, and maintains a leadership position in Spain and France and co-leadership in Poland and Morocco. It also produces office furniture and home furniture. In the leisure and sports area, it manufactures Orbea bicycles, exercise equipment and items for camping, the garden and the beach (Organisational Estructure in Mondragon, consumer goods sublet).

These machines are complemented by automation and control products for machine tools, packaging machinery, machinery for automating assembly processes and processing wood, forklift trucks, electric transformers, integrated equipment for the catering industry, cold stores, and refrigeration equipment. Specifically focusing on the automotive sector, the Corporation also manufactures a wide variety of dies, molds and tooling for casting iron and aluminium, and occupies a leading position in machinery for the casting sector.

In Industrial Components, MONDRAGON posted a turnover of 1.5

billion euros in 2009, a sector in which it operates as an integrated supplier for the leading car manufacturers, offering from the design and development of a part to the industrialisation and supply of components and assemblies. It has different business units such as brakes, axles, suspension, transmission, engines, aluminium wheel rims, fluid conduction, and other internal and external vehicle components. It also produces components for the main domestic appliance manufacturers in three business areas: white goods, home comfort, and electronics.

And it manufactures flanges and pipe accessories for processing oil-gas, petrochemical plants and power generation, copper and aluminum electrical conductors, and components for conveyors

(Industrial Components sublet).

In construction, sales totalled 974 million euros in 2009. This is a sector in which MONDRAGON has constructed emblematic buildings and important infrastructure projects. It designs and builds large metallic (URSSA), laminated wood and prefabricated concrete structures; supplies prefabricated parts in polymer

concrete; offers solutions for formwork and structures (ULMA

Group) as well as public works machinery and the industrialisation of the construction process, including engineering and assembly services. It also produces elevators (ORONA Group).

Let's see if we can discover any continuity within these statistics and overall revenue:

In services to business, sales totalled 248 million euros in 2008,

including business consultancy services, architecture and engineering, property consulting, design and innovation (LKS

Group), systems engineering for electromechanical installations, and integrated logistics engineering. It also offers a modern language service, manufactures educational equipment, and provides graphic arts services (MccGraphics).

"In 2009 59.4% of total turnover came from international sales" (2009 Mondragon Corporative Profile). These sales, it turns out, are the product of 'export of products abroad and production generated in the 75 subsidiaries located in 17 different countries." China maintains thirteen subdivisions; France comes in second place with nine; Poland, next, with eight; both the Czech Republic and Mexico with seven each; Brazil has five; Germany and Italy next with four apiece; Romania and the United Kingdom with three each; the United States, Turkey, Portugal, Slovakia, and India, surprisingly, with two each; and lastly Thailand and Morocco both with one lone subsidiary.

Of course China maintains the most of these Mondragon "plants," since, for one, China maintains the greatest population in the entire world, and two, this is paramount to any form of leftist collectivism. "Overall, in 2009 these 75 plants produced goods worth 3.1 billion euros and provided work for 14,506 people. The corporate industrial park in Kunshan, close to Shanghai currently houses seven subsidiaries."

IV. Self-Determination: what to do with the attained Knowledge

The truly difficult task that we all must face to get beyond this great world-wide economic slump, is to manage the change effectively and principled. By principled, though, managers as well as individual employees must maintain and advocate a strong sense of morals and ethical upstanding, but also the ability to change with the times. That will be one of the biggest shifts.

By far the most beneficial and productive element of this technological age that brings humanity to take part in, and is therefore crucial to consider in terms of information technologies, is the process of self-determination. Acknowledging and adapting an aptitude toward this state of life-long-learning has become and will continue to be essential. This recognition will continue to be the most integral part of corporate culture. Training is nonstop, and that is a bonus. To reap the most favorable benefits and the full potential of leading technologies, personnel will exist in a state of perpetual training. Thus, life will only continue to become faster paced. Rather than accepting that as overwhelming or frightening or out of control, humanity must embrace it for the benefits.

V. Finance, Retail, Industry, and Knowledge Collective

For one, we will be working intellectually smarter, and not physically harder. This will draw a more strengthened state of generalized consciousness and further human evolution. Accordingly, we will not pessimistically waste time blaming the group; each of our mindsets will have shifted from the utmost need to find social acceptance on the job. That shift will soon placed on the expeditious completion of every chore so as to have time to then socialize. Humans are social mammals, no doubt. Therefore, we will only continue to further human evolution.

For another, new technological innovations will always be on the rise, and as a team we will always be trying to competitively accelerate more quickly than other corporations. In order to optimize all prospective enhancements to their fullest, individual employees will need to be equipped with -- right alongside the comprehensive knowledge of the inception of the newest technology -- all options available in the implementation of pliable and functional practices able to facilitate technology.

VI. Conclusion

Location and Job Security

This paper may have gone off track at times, but the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's Basic Principles were hopefully substantiated well enough. Moreover, the Four Main Factors were the main points to illustrate here: 1) the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's rapidly advancing concept of Work Environment, in accordance with Finance, 2) reasons people change and the nemesis which causes the ever-growing sense of improvement (perceived as advancement) in Retail, 3) Benefits of Autonomy and Self-Reliance in Industry, and 4) the self-determination from which all knowledge is based.

Again, knowledge poses as the central theme by which these other elements find nourishment; without knowledge, a vital sense of comprehensive awareness, that on-top-of-it characteristic paramount to Mondragon would not exist as it stands. Not learning about these factors, but learning about how to discover and learn is far more paramount.

Why does one attend college, as an uneducated (therefore oblivious) person might ask, and partake in soon-to-be-forgotten class work and arbitrary study? -- Ah ha! Because knowledge permeates.

"This area has a dual focus: education-training and innovation, which have both been key elements in the development of the Corporation" (Finez, 2007).

Moreover, "Training-education is mainly linked to the dynamism of the University of Mondragon, the significant role that Politeknika Ikastegia Txorierri, Arizmendi Ikastola and Lea Artibai Ikastetxea play in their respective areas and the activity of the Management and Co-operative Development Centre Otalora." University of Mondragon now makes this entire ideal seem far more astute as well as ideological.

The University of Mondragon is a university of a co-operative nature, which combines the development of knowledge, skills, and values, and maintains close relations with business, especially the Co-operatives. Technological innovation is generated by through the Co-operatives' own R&D departments, the Corporate Science

and Technology Plan, the work of the Corporation's 12 technology centres and the Garaia Innovation Park.

Fortunately, the convenience of this technological age is the broad availability that this technology brings with it. It is quite accommodating; in fact, far more accommodating than ever before in history. This is definitely a benefit. In a major sense, enhanced self-reliance brings a newly formed sense of job security with it. Both metaphorically and literally, this broadening sense of situational and environmental advancement will bring with it far more career availabilities, and even options with it. Moreover, this will invite training and build work experience at an unprecedented rate.

All in all, the future looks rather promising.

Source Citation:

Tonder, L. (27 August 2003). "Inessential Commonality: Immanence and Abundance" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA Online. Web. 26 May 2009. [fromhttp://www.allacademic.com/meta/p63757_index.html

Lionais, D. (Forthcoming): Fuller, D., A. Jonas and R. Lee (Eds.) "Social enterprise and socio-legal structure: constructing alternative institutional spaces for economic development." Alternative spaces of economy, society and politics: Interrogating alterity. London; Ashgate. Web. 7 April 2011.

Sturr, Chris. Steelworkers Form Collaboration with MONDRAGON, the World's Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative (27 October 2009). Dollars and sense real world economics. Web. 8 April 2011.

Finez, Javier. "Virtual Teams and Creativity in the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation" (2007). Higher Creativity for Virtual Teams: Developing Platforms for Co-Creation. IGI Global. Web. 2011.

Kasmir, Sharryn. The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town (1996). State University of New York. New York Press.