Confrontations and Compromise: Dispute Resolution at a Worker Cooperative Coal Mine |
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Authors: | Elizabeth A. Hoffmann |
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Affiliation: | Elizabeth A. Hoffmann is assistant professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University. |
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Abstract: | This paper compares dispute-resolution behavior at a large coal mine in South Wales at two times: when the mine was run as a conventional, hierarchical organization by British Coal and, several years later, when it was bought out by the employees and converted into a worker cooperative. Synthesizing themes from law and society, organizational theory, and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) research, I demonstrate how shared ownership, flattened hierarchy, and cooperative ideology impact on disputing behavior. By changing from a hierarchical organization to a worker cooperative, the coal mine increased is level of procedural justice and transformed its dispute-resolution behavior to rely much more on informal resolution. Using qualitative methods, this research draws on 42 in-depth open interviews with miners and managers. |
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