Resisting the Tide: The Roles of Ideology in Sustaining Alternative Organizing at a Self-managed Cooperative

Benjamin Huybrechts and Aurélie Soetens
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Benjamin Huybrechts: LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Aurélie Soetens: HEC Liège, Management School of the University of Liège

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Abstract: This paper examines how organizational ideology can be collectively mobilized to sustain an alternative organizational form—a self-managed cooperative—in resistance to institutional prescriptions perceived as hostile. Based on an ethnographic study of the Venezuelan cooperative Cecosesola, we identify three roles through which ideology enables the reproduction of the alternative form over time: ideology as a mobilizing normative framework to justify resistance; as a cultural-cognitive framework to engage members and integrate them into the resistance project; and as a regulatory framework ensuring member compliance. However, we find that in parallel with sustaining self-management as an alternative form, mobilizing ideology may also paradoxically entail costs in terms of individual sacrifices, exclusion of members and reduction of group heterogeneity, leading to the creation of an authoritarian system. These findings shed light on the ideological drivers of institutional resistance and bring new insights to understand the challenge of sustaining self-management and other alternative organizational forms within a hostile institutional context.

Keywords: worker cooperative; self-management‌; ‌alternative organization; degeneration; ideology‌; institutional resistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01-06
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Published in Journal of Management Inquiry, 2022, pp.105649262110704. ⟨10.1177/10564926211070429⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03601698

DOI: 10.1177/10564926211070429

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