Owning the Work · Chapter Three

Every Egg, One Basket

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Three of Owning the Work: Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and What the Evidence Shows.

Abstract

In November 2013 Fagor Electrodomésticos, the appliance maker that had helped found the Mondragón cooperative group in the Basque Country, declared bankruptcy. It had begun as Talleres Ulgor, whose first stone was laid in April 1956 and whose first bylaws were approved in 1959; by the time it failed it was a multinational with subsidiaries in France and Poland, competing in a global market for washing machines and refrigerators. For a movement that had used Mondragón as its proof for half a century, the failure was a hard morning. Ammanuel Santa Anna does not leave it out of his book. Writing about Mondragón's strengths, he stops himself in four words: "Mondragon is not utopia." He goes on to describe the bankruptcy as a failure "that tested the cooperative model severely and produced real suffering for the worker-owners involved," and then gives his reading of the response: "The crisis was metabolized by the community rather than externalized onto individuals."

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). Every Egg, One Basket. In Owning the Work. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989567

@incollection{santaanna2026owning3,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {Every Egg, One Basket},
  booktitle = {Owning the Work},
  chapter   = {3},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989567},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/owning-the-work/03-every-egg-one-basket/}
}

References

  1. Errasti, A., Bretos, I., & Nunez, A. (2017). The viability of cooperatives: The fall of the Mondragon cooperative Fagor. Review of Radical Political Economics, 49(2), 181–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613416666533
  2. Errasti, A., Bretos, I., & Etxezarreta, E. (2016). What do Mondragon coopitalist multinationals look like? The rise and fall of Fagor Electrodomésticos S. Coop. and its European subsidiaries. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 87(3), 433–456. https://doi.org/10.1111/apce.12137
  3. Kim, E. H., & Ouimet, P. (2014). Broad-based employee stock ownership: Motives and outcomes. The Journal of Finance, 69(3), 1273–1319. https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12150
  4. Freeman, R. B., Kruse, D. L., & Blasi, J. R. (2008). Worker Responses to Shirking under Shared Capitalism (NBER Working Paper 14227). https://doi.org/10.3386/w14227
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  6. Pendleton, A., & Robinson, A. (2010). Employee stock ownership, involvement, and productivity: An interaction-based approach. ILR Review, 64(1), 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979391006400101
  7. Kurtulus, F. A., & Kruse, D. L. (2017). How Did Employee Ownership Firms Weather the Last Two Recessions? Employee Ownership, Employment Stability, and Firm Survival: 1999–2011. W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. https://doi.org/10.17848/9780880995276

Every chapter of Owning the Work

  1. Chapter OneWho Holds a Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989565
  2. Chapter TwoA Share in the Placedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989566
  3. Chapter ThreeEvery Egg, One Basketdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989567
  4. Chapter FourThreats From, Threats Todoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989568
  5. Chapter FiveA Bakery's Arithmeticdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989569
  6. Chapter SixFour Houses That Kept Their Purposedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989570
  7. Chapter SevenTwo Beginnings in 1956doi:10.5281/zenodo.23989571
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989572
  9. Chapter NineKnowing Whether It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989573
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989574
  11. Chapter ElevenOne Person's Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989576
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Roots Under the Standdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989014
  13. Chapter ThirteenWhat Moves Between the Rootsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989016
  14. The WorkbookEvery Tool, and Ninety Daysdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989020

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.