Worker Co-operatives and the Hiding Hand: How Limited Foreknowledge Facilitates Greater Worker Co-operative Participation

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 29: Worker and Employer Beliefs and Justifications

Abstract

Worker co-operatives are democratically run and collectively owned workplaces. As such, they offer a unique opportunity to explore democracy in action. However, membership in worker co-operatives often demands more work and dedication than standard jobs. Committee work, co-governance, membership meetings, and “pitching in” to help other members with their work are all demands on co-op members’ time and effort that conventional jobs don’t make. Thorough knowledge of this higher level of labor would have dissuaded many members from ever joining initially, but they usually lacked sufficient foreknowledge of this aspect of co-operative membership. Once they had become members of the co-operatives, few workers quit in reaction to the higher work demand. Instead, they heightened their level of commitment, dedicated more time and effort to their co-operatives, and remained in their co-ops. This gives support for Hirchman’s Hiding Hand Theory, that inadequate information about possible hurdles before commencing an endeavor actually makes the endeavor more likely to be attempted and more likely succeed. This is stark in contrast to assertions by other scholars that much foreknowledge is necessary for success. This is good news for the co-operative movement, in that it implies that worker co-operatives can flourish and grow even though they often are poorly understood by those who have not (yet?) joined the co-operative.

Author

• Elizabeth Hoffmann, Purdue University