The Master's Degree in Personnel Management Service in Organizations of the School of Economics invited last Thursday José Luis Olasolo, former senior position of the Mondragon Corporation, to give a seminar on the system of internal management of cooperatives, more specifically of the group Mondragon.

Mondragon is a business corporation that was born in the fifties and is made up of more than a hundred cooperatives belonging to different sectors: industrial, credit (Caja Laboral, Lagunaro...), consumer (group Eroski), agricultural, research, Education (University of Mondragon), services (consultancy service, insurance...), etc. In total, it has 120 corporate and 180 investee companies. According to Olasolo, "Mondragon is not a holding company, but a voluntary association of independent cooperatives".

The Mondragon Corporation is the leading business group in the Basque Country and the seventh in Spain. Moreover, it not only has a presence throughout the country but also in the five continents, and is "known worldwide for the particularity of industrial cooperatives," said the speaker.

Likewise, Olasolo made reference letter to the corporate values, stating that "the group is based on solidarity commitments and its main mission statement is to generate wealth in society, as well as to encourage participation in the daily work of all the cooperative's workers".