This dissertation is available for free download through the University of Arizona library and the author's web site.Since Argentina's economic collapse of 2001, workers who occupied abandoned and bankrupt businesses and put them back into operation as cooperatives have attracted increasing attention on the part of academic researchers and other disaffected workers. This dissertation reviews the political economic contexts in which these "recovered businesses" were established, reviews the dynamics of social movements involved, and considers the Argentine recovered business phenomenon from three analytical perspectives: 1) Marxist poltical economy; 2) Neo-institutional analysis (drawing on the work of Ostrom); and 3) Sociospatial subjectivity (with particular reference to Butler, Lefebvre, and Bourdieu). The author, through these analyses, proposes a theory of the "industrial commons" and considers the potential for expansion and contraction of recovered business movements as their protagonists struggle to resist reterritorialization by forces associated with the state and the capitalist marketplace. Observations made by the author are supplemented by numerous quotations drawn from interviews conducted with Argentine recovered business workers in 2008.Key conclusions include the recognition that social and spatial changes have accompanied the expropriation of private workplaces and their conversion to cooperatives, that these changes may create contexts for the reproduction of cooperative values, and that the new political economic subjects produced through these processes may help to secure the long term viability and growth of not only recovered businesses, but a newly emerging "self-managed workers" movement, as well.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Racial and gender discrimination in the workplace is still prevalent in western society. Authoritarian organizational hierarchies may further embed stereotypes and prejudice that reduce the likelihood for inclusion and equity within organizations. Democracy as an alternative governance structure for organizations has been proposed and practiced in organizations within western societies demonstrating effectiveness in reducing class disparities, but limited work has investigated racial and gender-based disparities. Employees working in democratically and non-democratically governed organizations were surveyed on their level of participation in organizational governance and attitudes toward their organization. Employees within democratically governed organizations experience on average higher positive job attitudes compared to employees in non-democratically governed organizations regardless of gender or race. It is found that women, Asian American, and Pacific Islander employees participate in organizational governance at equivalent rates as White male colleagues, but Black, Indigenous, and People of Color employees do not. Members of minoritized groups within democratically governed organizations experience similar feelings influence over organizational outcomes and psychological ownership compared to their White male colleagues. Findings also imply having an ownership stake in the organization plays a significant role individual participation but cannot fully account for racial disparities in participation rates within democratically governed organizations. These results imply democratically governed organizations may effectively increase racial and gender inclusion and equity, but not fully reduce existing racial disparities. Future work should continue to explore additional mechanisms that influence individual participation in organizational governance and how perceptions of status and competence differentiate between governance structures within organizations.

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).