This dissertation investigates the impact of institutional and governance factors on the performance of 10 selected smallholder agricultural cooperatives (case studies) in KwaZulu- Natal (KZN). All the selected cooperatives were traditionally structured (e.g., one-member, one-vote system). Due to logistical and administrative constraints, the selected smallholder cooperatives were drawn from the EThekwini and UMgungundlovu Districts (the latter comprising of two sub-districts, namely Camperdown and Msunduzi), which incorporate the major cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Five of the cooperatives grow and market vegetables, three produce and market poultry, one is a beef production cooperative and another operates a bakery. Information from the interviews suggests that members of the selected smallholder cooperatives do not fully understand cooperative principles and have high expectations of potential benefits of being members. Descriptive analysis of the case studies describes total membership of each selected cooperative; average number of management meetings per month; gender and age composition of cooperative members; the characteristics of chairpersons of these cooperatives (e.g., gender, age and education); the initial capital structure of these cooperatives; annual turnover; growth opportunities; and institutional and governance factors influencing the performance of these cooperatives. The results of a cluster analysis suggest that the performance of the selected smallholder cooperatives is influenced by institutional and governance problems. Institutional problems give rise to low levels of equity and debt capital, reliance on government funding, low levels of investment, and subsequent loss of members. Governance problems are strongly linked to the absence of secret ballot, low levels of education, lack of production and management skills training, weak marketing arrangements and consequent low returns to members as patrons or investors. The conclusion is that appropriate institutional arrangements and good governance are important to the performance of enterprises initiated by groups of smallholders. South Africa’s new Cooperatives Act prevents smallholder cooperatives from adopting good institutional arrangements. Alternative ownership structures such as close corporations and private companies offer better institutional arrangements and opportunities for equity-sharing partnerships. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

A democratic workplace is one where workers as a body have the right to determine the internal organization and future direction of the firm. Worker co-operatives are a type of democratic firm. In a worker co-operative employees are joint-owners of the firm and participate democratically in workplace governance. Much has been written about the supposed benefits of worker co-operatives for workers and for society. One thread of this research, originating with Carole Pateman’s theoretical work (Pateman 1970), argues that worker co-operatives act as sites of political learning for workers. By participating democratically in workplace decisions, individuals are thought to learn the skills and psychological dispositions needed to participate in political democracy. A second thread argues that co-operatives will improve worker well-being. Democratic governance will give workers control over work organization, increasing autonomy in their daily lives, and leading to an increase in non-material work rewards such as job satisfaction. Worker ownership will equalize the material rewards from work and improve job security. These arguments are premised on the idea that democratic governance structures and worker ownership will lead to widespread, effective worker participation in decision-making and the equalization of power at work. However, insufficient attention is given to the contextual factors beyond formal governance and ownership structures that shape the internal dynamics of workplace democracy. I conduct an in-depth, mixed-methods case study of a worker co-operative with 158 employees in the UK cycling retail industry. Using survey research, social network analysis, in-depth interviews and direct observation, I show how individual differences, firm-level contextual factors such as the social composition of the organization, and macro-level factors such as economic and cultural context, lead to unequal participation opportunities and different outcomes for different groups of workers within the firm. My research leads to three conclusions. First, the outcomes of workplace democracy for workers are highly context-dependent. They will differ across groups of workers within co-operatives, across different democratic firms, and across cultures. Second, the relationship between workplace democracy and political participation is more complex than the Pateman thesis suggests. It is contingent on the political identities of workers, which are themselves shaped by wider political economic context. Political identity affects both participation behaviour at work, and how workplace experience shapes political views. Third, the subjective well-being outcomes of workplace democracy depend on workers’ expectations about work. Expectations are shaped by the same forces that mould political identity. Workplace democracy raises expectations for certain groups of workers, leading to well-being harms when expectations are not met. Overall, the benefits of workplace democracy for workers and for society are overstated. In the UK context, co-ops are unlikely to realize the benefits attributed to them without large-scale public policy interventions.

This Master’s thesis examines the interesting paradox of why employee ownership is morecommon in the United States of America than in Sweden, when other forms of rights andbenefits for employees are more developed in the latter. This paradox boils down tounderstanding the characteristics of employee ownership and its relationship to thetraditional political left-right scale. In other words, from a political point of view, shouldemployee ownership be seen as a left or right phenomenon? Instead of approaching thisquestion from a philosophical angle about how things should be seen, this thesis uses a morepractical empirical approach. By comparing the institutions on macro-level in Sweden andthe United States, and applying the theory of ‘varieties of capitalism’, the goal is tounderstand in which institutional and political contexts employee ownership flourish. This isdone using a comparative case study design, focusing on historical and institutionaldifferences between how the two countries regulate their political economies. The theory of‘varieties of capitalism’ is used in the form of two ideal types, liberal- and social(coordinated) market economy, which are used as analytical tools to examine institutionaldifferences. The aim of the study can be summarized by the two research questions: 1) Isemployee ownership a liberal or social-democratic phenomenon? and 2) Can the differencesin occurrence of employee ownership between Sweden and the United States be explainedusing the ideal types liberal- and social market economy? The findings indicate that employeeownership is in fact a liberal phenomenon, and that the ideal types and theory of ‘varieties ofcapitalism’ is useful for explaining this. The conclusion is that there seems to be a substitutioneffect between employee ownership and the Swedish model on the labor market. It seems likethe strong labor market- and welfare-state institutions in Sweden already provide employeesand employers with enough coordination, rights, benefits and influence to make the interestfor employee ownership too small. In contrast, the lack of strong institutions for coordinationbetween employees and employers in the liberal market economy of the United States seem tocreate a bigger need for companies to tie their employees closer to them. The fact thatemployee ownership is often created on the initiative of the company management alsostrengthens this hypothesis: employee ownership is a liberal phenomenon driven by thecorporations to compensate for the lack of strong labor market institutions in a liberaleconomy.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions l'effet de l'auto-sélection des salariés sur l'estimation de la productivité, des différentiels de salaires et de qualité du travail entre les secteurs. Afin de prendre en compte l'auto-sélection des employés dans l'estimation des différentiels le long de la distribution des salaires, nous construisons une approche innovante composée de trois caractéristiques: (i) nous nous intéressons aux effets par quantile inconditionnel; (ii) nous incorporons des effets fixes spécifiques à chaque quantile; (iii) nous proposons une méthode de correction de l'incidental parameter bias. Cette approche permet de produire des résultats exploitables en terme de politiques publiques. Nous montrons dans un premier temps que la sélection positive dans le secteur public tend à se dégrader. Elle disparaît totalement en haut de la distribution des salaires dans la période récente, suggérant un effet négatif du gel des salaires nominaux. Dans notre deuxième article, nous mettons en évidence une sélection négative substantielle dans le secteur informel concernant les hommes et les bas salaires. Cette sélection négative apparaît à la suite de la Grande Récession, indiquant une réallocation des salariés les moins productifs vers le secteur informel. Dans le dernier article, nous montrons pour la période récente que le niveau de productivité des SCOP n'est pas significativement différent de celui des autres entreprises. Nous confirmons l'hypothèse selon laquelle les motivations non-pécunières des employés expliquent une partie importante de la productivité des SCOP dans deux des secteurs étudiés (secteur manufacturier et secteur des transports). / This PhD thesis studies the effect of workers' self-selection when estimating productivity, wages and job quality differentials between sectors. In order to account for the self-selection of employees in the estimation of differentials along the wage distribution, we develop an innovative approach comprising three features: (i) we rely on unconditional quantile effects ; (ii) we incorporate quantile-specific fixed effects; (iii) we suggest a treatment of the incidental parameter bias. This method allows to provide public policies relevant comparisons. We show first that the positive selection into public jobs tends to decline. It totally disappears among top earners in the recent period, suggesting the detrimental effect of nominal wage freeze. In the second paper, we unveil that there is a substantial negative selection into informal salary work for men on average and particularly at low wages. It arises in the wake of the Great Recession, pointing to a shakeout of less productive workers in the formal sector. In the last paper, we account for employees' non-pecuniary motives in our comparison of the productivity of labour-managed firms and other for-profits company. We confirm for the recent period and on a large scale that the SCOP total factor productivity level is not significantly different from the other firms'. We find also results that support the hypothesis that employees non-pecuniary motives accounts for a substantial part of French labour-managed firms productivity in two of the three industries studied (manufacturing and transports).