👉The table of contents so far is here.
Chapter 11: Planned Economy and Corporate Forms
11.4. Corporate internal structure -part 2-
In contrast to socially owned production enterprise, where management and labor are separated, self-managed production cooperative is structured so that workers themselves are involved in management. For this reason, in a production cooperative, the general meeting of members, made up of all members, is the highest management body.
One question is what size of company is possible for such self-management, and the maximum is thought to be less than 1,000 members. It could also be more limited to a level of 500, but this is left to a policy decision.
For a production cooperative with more than 500 members, if it is not realistic to regularly hold general meetings with full participation, it should be allowed to establish a member representative council similar to the worker representative committee of a production business organization. Even in cases with fewer than 500 members, proxy participation by power of delegate should be permitted.
In any case, in a production cooperative, members are directly involved in management through general meeting, but since it is larger than small business, it needs a board of directors as the body responsible for management. Directors are elected by and are subject to supervision by the general member assembly. Regarding the audit system, even in a production cooperative, a distinction is made between operational audits and environmental audits, with permanent operational auditors and environmental auditors appointed to correspond to each.
However, for large enterprises with more than 1,000 members, the production cooperative model is no longer sufficient to govern them effectively, and it is necessary to recognize a production business corporation model similar to a socially owned enterprise. Therefore, as the number of members increases, a production cooperative may be converted into a production business corporation.
In this large enterprise format, management and labor are separated, similar to a production business organization, and a permanent management committe and a workers' representative committee are established. The rest of the internal structure will also be similar to that of a production business organization.
On the other hand, for micro-enterprises with fewer than 20 members (the required number of members is determined by policy), the production cooperative model may not be flexible enough. In such cases, a system such as a cooperative labor group would be more appropriate to allow for more flexible cooperative relationships. In this case, apart from having at least one auditor (there is no need to distinguish between an operational auditor and an environmental auditor), the internal structure of the company is left to the discretion of the members, and management can be decided by consensus of all members or by consensus of several secretaries.
👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.
