Much has been written over the years about worker co-operatives as an alternative to traditional forms of business organization and ownership. The literature has mostly covered the issues of whether worker co-ops are more productive, more profitable and/or have a longer existence than traditional firms. This paper tries to fill some gaps in the literature by covering topics rarely if ever mentioned in writings on worker co-ops by exploring their spans of management, their decision making with regard to investment and hiring, and the governance input from their local communities. The results from a recent survey are interesting from an organizational behavior or institutional perspective in that worker co-ops show themselves generally to be different from most of their counterparts.

中文翻译：

---

美国工人合作社及其管理，决策和治理的范围：探索性分析

多年来，已经有很多关于工人合作社的文章，它们可以替代传统形式的企业组织和所有权。文献大多涉及工人合作社是否比传统公司更有生产力，利润更高和/或存在时间更长的问题。本文试图通过探讨工人合作社的管理范围，他们在投资和雇用方面的决策以及当地社区的治理投入，通过涵盖工人合作社的著作中很少提及的主题来填补文献中的空白。从组织行为或机构的角度来看，最近的一项调查结果很有趣，因为工人合作社通常显示出自己与大多数同事不同。