A SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS IN A LABOUR MANAGED FIRM: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF MANAGEMENT TEAM´S POWER

Resumo

The difficulty of directing self-managed companies has been one of the arguments put
forward in economic literature to show the unfeasibility of this model. There are not many people
with the necessary talent who are willing to direct owner-worker, and to take on collective decision-
making proceedings, with the implications regarding unsustainable incentives for this very
particular type of business. However, the growth of self-managed businesses has shown that it is
possible to achieve, thus the facts give the lie to the unfeasibility argument.  This paper
endeavours to make an analysis of  corporate governance in a labour managed firm with an
organizational methodology: the network social analysis (Granovetter, 1973; French, 1956;
Fombrun, 1983; Waserman, 1994; Hanneman, 2001). It is divided into four sections. The first
summarises the findings of socio-economic studies concerning the perspectives for analysing
corporate governance in employee-owned enterprises - worker cooperatives and other labour
managed firms. The second explains the main topics of the network analysis and the approaches to
empirical research. The third deals with empirical research applying this methodology to a SAL with
thirty-three workers. Finally, the scope of these ideas from the empirical analysis is evaluated and
possible lines of useful research are suggested.