Workers cooperatives : enterprises with a participative management ? [Les Scop (Sociétés Coopératives et Participatives) : des entreprises au management participatif ?]

By essence, workers cooperatives, due to their law status and to the first aim centered on a collective project, have to develop a participative management. In the following study, thanks to an enquiry driven with chief executives and employees of worker cooperatives, it appears that the employees participation is obvious, both under financial and non-financial forms. However, the implementation of participative management is not going without posing some difficulties such as tensions between employees, long time in taking decisions, important spending of energy and of time. Besides, the success of participative management in workers cooperatives depends heavily on leadership.