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The theoretical and empirical literature reports that worker co‐operatives protect employment better than investor‐owned firms (IOFs) do, especially during economic downturns. This paper introduces the new hypothesis that not only worker co‐operatives but all co‐operative types (e.g. worker, producer, consumer, credit) protect employment better than IOFs do because they all satisfy their members' needs—instead of maximizing shareholder value—by delivering a stable stream of goods and services. A long‐standing pattern in needs satisfaction implies constant activity and employment. To substantiate our hypothesis theoretically, we resort to the evolutionary interpretation of the firm as a problem solver and to the literature on organizational resilience. We test the hypothesis using the data released by the Italian Institute of Statistics for all Italian enterprises in the 1996–2008 pre‐crisis and 2008–15 crisis periods. Dynamic multifactor partitioning confirms that in Italy, all typologies of co‐operatives withstood the crisis better than other business forms did and that co‐operatives were affected the least by economic cyclicality and employment loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Struggles for social inclusion necessitate efforts to enhance democratic communication. Communication practices and institutions are deeply intertwined with movements advocating for and against social justice, particularly in contemporary contexts of developing inclusion. We designed and evaluated the "Telling the Truth: How to Inform While Promoting an Inclusive Society" program. This program aimed to enhance knowledge and increase positive attitudes toward inclusion among 61 journalism students through quantitative and qualitative methods. The results indicate that participants demonstrated higher positive attitudes in the post-test, showing increased support for a more inclusive socio-economic vision and a greater inclination toward activism. Overall, these findings underscore the significance of journalism training in advancing a socially inclusive context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is a unique economic model that addresses contemporary community problems by democratising the economy through activities that promote sustainability, solidarity, and collective prosperity. Research on the SSE has increased in recent years, showing its potential as an alternative to dominant economic schemes. This article aims to analyse how the SSE can contribute to sustainability in rural sector associations in Ecuador through the Participatory Action Research (PAR) method. This method empowers various stakeholders, including the community, associations, and the university, to be actively involved in designing, developing, and implementing solutions to alleviate their problems. The results show that in the context of a developing country, this active participation, interaction, and commitment can identify the various problems that the rural sector and its associations are experiencing. This situation allows for possible joint action solutions, involving people who usually do not have decision-making power or are vulnerable, by diagnosing their socio-economic conditions and establishing a training programme where knowledge production is democratic, thus combining theoretical and practical elements according to the needs detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the consequences of fusing market-based and social principles for how 'the social' and solidarity is understood. To do so, I turn to the recently formalized 'Social and Solidarity Economy'(SSE) in Greece. I conceptualize the SSE as a governmental mode of power that attempts to render social and market-based principles as commensurate. I claim this occurs through the codification and proliferation of what we may call 'hybrid-economic practices' – such as social impact measurement, and social innovation. Hybrid-economic practices fuse a utilitarian, efficiency-maximizing logic that weighs costs and benefits, with narratives of solidarity and collective social purpose. Based on a qualitative analysis of the SSE law in Greece and interviews with practitioners and policy-makers, I claim that fusing market-based and social principles come at the cost of depleting the political and ethical components of solidarity and 'the social.' Yet, rather than depoliticizing them, I argue hybrid-economic practices more appropriately transmute how solidarity and 'the social' is understood through three mutually constitutive processes: economization, entrepreneurialization, and communitarianization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work (SW) is criticized for its (i) inconsistent ontology, epistemology, and methodology and (ii) co-dependency with the capitalist hegemony, which is the main cause of multiple crises that primarily affect the most vulnerable. Addressing these issues is of paramount importance if SW is to achieve its core mandate of promoting social change, social development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. The purpose of this paper is to assert that SW can address these issues by learning from the (i) Settlement House Movement (SHM), especially the Hull-House tradition of SW; and (ii) current endeavors of the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE). We were led to this assertion because we noticed in our research, in the area of SSE of vulnerable groups and SW, remarkable similarities and potentials of these two approaches to help transform SW. Our argument is based on data and insight gained from (i) a narrative literature review on the history of SW and the nature of SSE; and (ii) a systematic scoping review of the SSE of People of African Descent (PAD) in Europe. In this paper, we elaborate on our key arguments and provide examples and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative research and longitudinal data on two Mondragon multinational cooperatives, the authors examine the multinational expansion of these co-ops and the diffusion of the cooperative model's employment practices to their subsidiaries in Brazil, China, Slovakia, France, and Poland. The results show that international expansion can radically transform the organizational architecture of co-ops and exacerbate dilemmas about how to put their hallmark values into practice. Moreover, the findings reveal a fragmented and inconsistent introduction of the cooperative model overseas. Work organization practices are homogeneous across the various sites, whereas job security, training, and pay equity practices are not. Core cooperative practices (i.e., employee participation in ownership, profit sharing, and general management) have not been implemented in any foreign operation. The study illustrates how market influences, institutions, and macro- and micro-politics shape the transfer of employment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]