Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Conversion to worker ownership can initiate a consequential change in authority while leaving substantial work to reconstruct the conditions of practical participation. This paper develops a conditional account of that reconstruction in worker cooperatives. It distinguishes ownership, organizational survival, workers' capabilities, operational authority and the distribution of burdens. A revised process profile records preparation, transition, receiving conditions, reconstruction and persistence through paired comparisons and partial orders. Verified capability, freedom and institutional-transition literature supplies philosophical antecedents, while selected studies of worker buyouts provide bounded empirical confrontation. A small formal model derives the reserve needed to sustain a dated reconstruction path and shows how equal final resources can coexist with different transition requirements. A scenario extension separates a plan selected before uncertainty resolves from a choice that presupposes later information. These accounting results concern one enabling condition and leave the normative assessment of authority and affected interests explicit. Constructed comparisons, objections and a prospective research design examine support, learning, membership, backsliding and viable alternatives to firm continuation. The paper proposes a revisable framework for discussing liberatory aspects of organizational change, with wider empirical validity and the adequacy of its normative premises remaining open.
DOI: 10.17613/en7k9-kw564
Author: HUANG, Wanhong
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7212548639
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