Loose Change and
Governance
Cleveland’s Evergreen Worker Owned
Cooperative Initiative
NICHOLAS C. ZINGALE, PHD – CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
ARITREE SAMANTA, PHD CANDIDATE – CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
DEBORAH RIEMANN, PLANNER
ESTHER WEST, GRADUATE STUDENT – CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF URBAN AFFAIRS
COLLEGE CONFERENCE
AUGUST 21, 2014
Authorizing Environment
New Governance
Social Entrepreneurship
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Loose networks of accountability
Reduced executive power
Reliance on diplomacy
Enabling/Technology Skills
Principal-Agent
-
Legal accountability
Lines of authority
Reliance on performance objectives
Relational and Contracting Skills
Constrained
Loose
Administrative Bureaucrat
Street Level Bureaucrat
-
Individual accountability
Limited executive power
Reliance on experience
Discretionary Skills
-
Hierarchical accountability
High level of executive power
Reliance on rules
Mgmt. and Organizational Skills
Direct Government
Adapted from Rush and Zingale 2014 - Permission Granted
Social Entrepreneurship and Bricolage
 Social Entrepreneurship
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Mission focus
Areas with neglect by
government, market
Blurred lines between
business, social enterprises.
Can be private, sociallydriven enterprises.
Operation has some
differences from traditional
market operating norms.
 Bricolage
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Making do with what is on
hand.
Combination of resources for
new purposes.
Using the resources at hand
– Often in a low resource
environment
Multiplex Ties
Evergreen Coop Process: social
entrepreneurship and bricolage within
loosely structured networks.
Realm of New Ideas
Describes the Openness to New Ideas
Transformation
Adaptation
Freedom to play around with rules
New elements
Freedom within the Rules
Existing Elements
Examples:
Advent of the Internet
New ecosystems
Examples:
Eds and Meds in Cleveland
New niche in existing ecosystem
Disruption/Situational
Status Quo
Rules no longer make sense
Element Chaos/Breakdown
Rules determine discourse
Element Maintenance
Examples:
De-industrialization
Disaster that wipes out ecosystem
Examples:
Steel industry in Cleveland
Maintain existing ecosystem niche
Realm of Rules
Describes the
constraints in
society in the form
of formal and
informal rules
How did a worker cooperative in Cleveland establish and authorizing
environment in the absence of policy and direct governmental
involvement?
Cleveland Evergreen
Cooperative
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Evergreen Organizational Structure
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Method
 Observations
 Interviews
 Document Review
 Literature
Findings (So Far) - Loose Change
Legacy City
and
Loose Space
(Context)
Change
Unconstrained by
Rule
(People bricoleurs)
Informal Networks
and
Loose Governance
(Process)
Change of Doxa
New Ideas
Bricolage
(Imagination Freedom)
Cleveland Evergreen
Cooperative
Social Entrepreneurship
New Elements
Making Do
Bricolage
Tinkering
Playing with rules
Authorizing Environment
Loose space
Loose governance
There is money involved, but not entirely the kind we
normally think of…more like loose change
What this means
 Looseness tends to create crawling space
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Openings for new ideas – less resistance
 Resiliency implies a condition toward stability (often associated with
control and structure). Resiliency might actually require loosening
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Democratized wealth for stabilizing communities
Democratized power for learning and working out interests
 Social Entrepreneurship and Bricolage is capable of leveraging resources
across a diverse set of loosely connected networks to create the conditions
of a high resource initiative within a low resource context.
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Anchors institutions tell part of the story (flashlight in a cave)
Shedding light on societal doxa to see what is around (lantern in a cave)
 It is accomplished as loose change – informal processes involving networks
and reduced executive power (governance), diplomacy (politics/enabling),
imagination (new ideas)