Overview

Of the almost 67,000 industrial firms that are currently operating in Portugal, less than 40 are managed by their workers. Why is worker self-management so rare? How do worker-managed factories emerge and survive in a market dominated by the logic of capitalism? The seminar will address these issues, emphasizing the potential and challenges of this alternative form of organizing industrial production.

Bio note 

Andrés Spognardi is post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Social Studies (CES), at the University of Coimbra. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Economy from the University of Mar del Plata (Argentina), a Master's Degree in Cooperative Organizations from the University of Bologna (Italy), and a PhD in Political Science from the Italian Institute of Human Sciences / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Italy). He has been research trainee at the Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies (Italy), and visiting scholar at the universities of Columbia (USA) and Valencia (Spain).

His research interests lie at the intersection between economic sociology, political sociology, and organizational studies. Combining historical methods and ethnography, his work explores the interplay between socioeconomic and political structures and non-capitalist economic organizations (cooperatives, nonprofits, self-managed enterprises). His current research project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal), aims to explain the divergent evolution of industrial self-management in Portugal and Spain since the time both countries completed their transition to democracy in the mid-1970s.
 

Activity under ECOSOL-CES