Managing and resisting ‘degeneration’ in employee-owned businesses: a comparative study of two large retailers in Spain and the UK

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 employee-owned businesses has been dominated by the ‘degeneration thesis’. This suggested that these businesses tend towards failure – they either fail commercially, or they relinquish their democratic characters. Bucking this trend and offering a beacon - especially in the UK - has been the commercially successful, co-owned enterprise of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) whose virtues have seemingly been rewarded with favourable and sustainable outcomes. This paper makes comparisons between JLP and its Spanish equivalent Eroski – the supermarket group which is part of the Mondragon cooperatives. The contribution of this paper is to examine in a comparative way how the managers in JLP and Eroski have constructed and accomplished their alternative scenarios. Using longitudinal data and detailed interviews with senior managers in both enterprises it explores the ways in which two large, employee-owned, enterprises reconcile apparently conflicting principles and objectives. The paper thus puts some new flesh on the ‘regeneration thesis’.

Danza, virtudes humanas y bienestar psicológico

[ES] El objetivo de este trabajo es hacer un análisis de la contribución de la danza en los profesionales y practicantes de la misma en el desarrollo de las virtudes humanas, las cuales suponen factores determinantes del bienestar psicológico. La investigación se basa en una metodología descriptiva-cuantitativa a través de la recogida de información en un cuestionario de 29 ítems cerrados. La finalidad es medir la relación de las variables de edad, género, perfil, tipo de danza y motivación en danza, con el supuesto de práctica danza-desarrollo virtudes humanas. Los resultados obtenidos permiten afirmar que los profesionales y practicantes de danza perciben esta relación como alta, lo cual abre una línea de investigación interesante para la Educación Social en cuanto a la danza como un nuevo ámbito o herramienta a través de la cual poder promocionar el desarrollo de las virtudes humanas y con ello incentivar el bienestar psicológico de los individuos.