Presentación del artículo sobre Grupo Up en el congreso internacional de Ciriec. Valencia será los días 13, 14 y 15 de junio de 2022 la capital mundial de la Economía Pública, el Cooperativismo y la Economía Social, con la celebración del 33 Congreso Internacional del CIRIEC. El Congreso se celebrará bajo el lema “Nuevas dinámicas mundiales en la era post-Covid: desafíos para la economía pública, social y cooperativa”. CIRIEC-España y CIRIEC-Internacional invitan a la comunidad internacional al Congreso, dirigido a directivos de empresas públicas y privadas a nivel global, representantes del mundo económico y social, dirigentes cooperativos y de la economía social, sindicalistas, políticos, profesionales y científicos. El Congreso tiene confirmada la participación, como conferencista inaugural, del Premio Nobel de Economía Paul Krugman.

1. Power and politics in the transition towards the federative
multinational co-op: Evidence from a global professional service co-op
Ignacio Bretos
Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Zaragoza
Email de contacto: ibretos@unizar.es
Anjel Errasti
Instituto de Derecho Cooperativo y Economía Social, Universidad del País Vasco
Aurélie Soetens
HEC Management School, University of Liège
Many co-operatives have registered extensive growth through the hierarchical control of
joint-stock subsidiaries in the past few decades. They are now urged to embrace a
network logic more in line with co-op principles of democratic control, equality, and
cooperation (Reed and McMurtry, 2009; Bretos et al. 2018). Ironically, world-renowned
co-ops such as John Lewis Partnership and Mondragon Corporation have been found to
rely on hierarchical modes of organising relationships with their subsidiaries and to
apply human resource practices to their peripheral business units that significantly differ
from the collaborative approach in use at co-op headquarters (HQ). This paradoxical
situation has resulted in much controversy amongst scholars, commentators, and
practitioners, who have detected a sign of co-op degeneration or mission drift in these
changes (Paranque and Willmott, 2014). In the past few years, however, greater
stakeholder scrutiny and internal self-reflection have led these co-ops to engage in
schemes to regenerate co-operative life (Storey et al., 2014); this includes the search for
solutions to extend co-op philosophy and praxis to their peripheral business units on the
basis of a pledge to human dignity and democracy at the workplace (Bretos and Errasti,
2017). In consequence, we ask: What challenges do multinational worker co-ops face in
moving towards decentralised network architectures and transferring practices of the co-
op model to their foreign subsidiaries? This question is addressed through a case study
of a French worker co-op, Up Group (henceforth Up), an originally small meal voucher
issuer that has become a multinational player in the employee benefits industry by
setting up capitalist subsidiaries both in France and overseas. Interestingly, in 2014, Up
launched the ‘Roots and Wings’ project, which had an ambitious goal: to turn Up into a
global co-op within four years by disseminating co-op model practices across all its
subsidiaries and by deploying Up’s foundational democratic principles in organising
relationships between headquarters and subsidiary. However, the project partially failed.
Up cooperativised three domestic subsidiaries by integrating them into the parent co-op.
Yet a number of other subsidiaries have remained capitalistic in France and progress
with the transfer of core co-op practices (employee participation in ownership, profit
sharing, and strategic decision-making) to foreign operations has been extremely
limited. The paper delves into how power and politics shaped this failed transformation.