The Organization workshop (OW) – or "Laboratorio Organizacional" (LO) in both Portuguese and Spanish – is a CHAT-based learning event where participants master new organizational as well as social knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach. It is aimed at large groups of unemployed and underemployed, a large number of whom sometimes may be persons with lower levels of education (LLEs). The OW addresses locally identified problems which can only be solved by collaborating groups. During a Workshop participants form a temporary enterprise which they themselves manage, an enterprise which contracts to do work at market rates. Once the workshop temporary enterprise is over, organizational, management and vocational skills gained can be used to form new businesses or social enterprises.
The creator of the OW is the Brazilian sociologist Clodomir Santos de Morais.Sobrado in The main elements of the workshop are a large group of people (stipulated originally by de Morais as "minimum 40, with no upper limit")"or, as many as local conditions and the amount of 'common pool resources' that can be put at the disposal of the participants allow": de Morais in ; Seriti : current field practice sees average numbers of around 150. the freedomsee e.g. Sobrado in on the nature of and need for autonomy. to organize themselves within the law and all necessary resources in the hands of the group. known also as 'the Inventory' or Common-pool resource. de Morais' OW guidelines, originally distributed in mimeographed form, were (re)printed in several countries, languages and formats (including popular cartoon) over the years. The text was first translated into English by Ian Cherrett for use in anglophone Africa.
Field of study de Morais' initial observation was that people, forced by circumstances and sharing one single resource base, learn to organize in a complex manner, involving a division of labor. During the seminal (1954 Recife, Brazil) event which he attended, a large group of activists had gathered in an ordinary town house, where "the cramped conditions of the house, combined with the need for secrecy so as not to arouse the suspicion of the police, ... imposed on the group a strict organizational discipline in terms of division and synchronization of all the tasks needed for such an event".Sobrado in The subsequent finding that little was learned about the event's supposed topic but instead, "an enormous lot about organization" became the inspiration and starting point for the design of what eventually was to become the organization workshop. Building on this, subsequent Moraisean practitioners corroborated de Morais' original finding that "organization" is not taught but "achieved" by a properly composed large group.
The OW field of study in the broadest sense is social psychology, the discipline that bridges the gap between psychology and sociology. Because the OW large group approach is Activity-basedde Morais in p.32Sobrado in it stands out in a field notable for a long tradition of behaviorism-based "small group" approaches, such as group dynamics and T-group training.
"Activity-based" means that for people to learn, a real object has to be actually present; as Jacinta Correia puts it: "to learn how to ride a bike, you need a bike to ride on".Correia in Thus, for a large group to learn how to manage a complexbecause based on the division of labor. enterprise, it has to have a complex enterprise to manage. In the OW context, this means that a group averaging 150, many of whom often with lower levels of education, are actively engaged, for an entire month, in (a) productive or service provision enterprise(s). For all the apparent, e.g., on-the-job training and action learning parallels, the OW's defining features are not only the need for a cooperative large group and the creation of (a) complex, real enterprise(s), but, principally, the position of the trainer and the way in which training messages are communicated. In OW-learning, the trainer's role is merely subsidiary (known as "scaffolding" in activity theory). In other words, it is not the trainer/instructor, but "the object that teaches".Sobrado in
In South America, its place of origin, this approach is known as the Método de Capacitación Masiva (MCM) or large-group capacitation method (LGCM).
International scope The OW originated in Brazil with de Morais' 1954 Recife workshop. In the wake of the coup d'état of March 1964, de Morais went into a 23-year exile in Chile, and the OW spread from there in the late sixties. After specializing in Cultural Anthropology (Santiago University) and in Land Reform at the ICIRA (Capacitation and Research Institute for Agrarian Reform Institute), de Morais became consultant for international and national development institutions and NGOs. Since then, the organization workshop has become a constant in a number of agrarian reform efforts in Latin America and (community) development projects elsewhere. From Chile, the OW spread to Costa Rica, Mexico, Panamá, Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, the Caribbean, a number of African countries as well as Europe. In 2015, for the first time in the UK, a pilot OW took place at 'Marsh Farm' urban housing Estate, Luton (near London) as part of a government supported Enterprise and Job creation project.Labra, Ivan, 2016 The Organisation Workshop at Marsh Farm, Luton, UK. Performance Report Integraterra – the Network of OW Practitioners.Imagine, 2016 Marsh Farm Organisation Workshop Evaluation Report
Impact During an OW Running an OW requires both a facilitators' enterprise (FE) and a participants' enterprise (PE), originally called "primary" and "secondary" structures by de Morais and called respectively "crew" and "team" in, for example, the SABC-televised Kwanda OWs in South Africa in the noughties.In South Africa, the OW was applied by, among others, the Seriti Institute, Soul City Institute and government departments such as South Africa's Department of Social Development. The FE is the framework set up for all organizational and learning activities before, during and after the Workshop. It is created before the workshop and remains in place after it closes.I.& I. Labra in p 51-52 The participants' first job, in turn, is to set up a PE which, usually after a period of trial and error referred to as anomie by de Morais, starts organizing work, subject to negotiation of a contract with the FE. Work delivered during the OW is then paid from the development fund at market rates.
Lectures on the "theory of organization" (TO) are an integral and compulsory part of the OW process. These lectures (1 ½ hours a day for two weeks) are meant to enable members of the PE to gain a perspective on their historical, social and economic context, on the working of the market economy, on current patterns and models of organization, as well as insights in individual and collective behavior. Skills acquired include practical enterprise organization and management skills including labor and time management, financial record-keeping and reporting, planning, quoting and tendering for work, vocational skills such as e.g. building, welding, tailoring, farming, catering or IT skills, and literacy and numeracy development.I. & I. Labra in
Post-OW Sponsoring bodies since the 1960s have ranged from United Nations organizations to local and international development agencies and NGOs, among them FAO, ILO, UNDP, terre des hommes, Concern Worldwide, Catholic Relief Services, Hivos and Norwegian People's Aid, Redd Barna and, recently e.g. in South Africa, the Soul City Institute and government departments such as South Africa's Department of Social Development.
Correia considers drawing up a correct quantitative, let alone qualitative balance sheet of the OW experience a "virtually impossible" task. Based on results of qualitative research into the OW she conducted, she tentatively "ventures some conservative estimates": 15% of OW participants are estimated to subsequently start an enterprise of one kind or another which, in the case of Brazil – (anno 2000, the publication year of 'A Future') – amounts to 9,000 enterprises.
An additional estimated 30% (equivalent to 8,000 persons) subsequently find work. Counting in family members, she arrives at 27,000 persons who, in her research sample, "have drawn some economic benefit from the OW, ... at an estimated unit cost of a mere $16 per person".Correia in Andersson similarly estimates the impact of the 2009–10 Kwanda program in South Africa: 5,000 participants; 200,000 community member beneficiaries; 2,000,000 viewers and listeners reached per week.
The OW's "massive" claim – (re: Capacitación 'Masiva' in Spanish/Portuguese) – is at its most visible when, as in the case of Brazil, Honduras or Costa Rica, it is run on a regional or national basis (known as PROGER/PRONAGER or National Job & Income Generation Program) which, in de Morais' mind, ought to be the OW's default mode: 110,946 people participated in 282 OWs in Brazil from 2000 to 2002. The report further cites 3,194 resulting enterprise start-ups and 25,077 new jobs; 22,000 participated in 104 São Paulo PAE (Self-Employment) Program from 1996 to 1998, resulting in 711 new enterprises, including People's Banks.Correia in 27,000 Hondurans and other nationals participated in more than 200 OWs during the 1973–1976 national PROCCARA Program in Honduras – quoted by n.245 which led to the creation of 1,053 new enterprises, some of the bigger ones still operating today (see e.g. Hondupalma below). 6,000 Cooperative (INSCOOP) workers graduated under the 1979 POR/OIT/PNUD/007 Program (Portugal).Correia in The Costa Rica (2010–13) Brunca Region GERMINADORA ProjectGerminadora Project – Spanish was decreed a "Project of Public Interest" by President Chinchilla Miranda in 2012. In 2015, 411 persons participated in the Westonaria (S. Africa) Organization Workshop, originally planned for 350. "W.O.W." p. 19.
Long-term survival rates of OW-initiated enterprises—(as compared to conventional micro-enterprises, where failure rates allegedly may be as high as 80% in their first year of operation).Correia in quotes a 90% 1st year failure rate according to SEBRAE (Brazilian Micro Enterprise Support Service) quote: "This creates the conditions for the failure of those microenterprises (the failure rate in the first year is over 80 percent) and deepens the desperation of participants."—are exemplified by e.g.: 13 surviving—in 2000—Costa-Rican cooperatives;Sobrado in the Honduran—(ex-1970s PROCCARA campaign)—palm oil growing and processing plants Hondupalma,Hondupalma celebrated its 30th year of operation in 2012 SalamaPalm Oil Producers in Honduras Salama p3 and Coapalma. In 1999 the Costa Rican Coopesilencio cooperative celebrated its 25th year of operation with a book by Barrantes. Since then, Coopesilencio has added eco-tourism to its activities.
Controversy The activity-based OW approach stands out from mainstream behaviorism-based small group approaches. That is by itself a potential source of controversy in both academia and accepted field practice.See also Andersson (2013) on Lewin and small group "bounded" approach in external links below.
Critique of the OW (and, indirectly, of de Morais) has come from both left and right, the latter, wary of de Morais' conceptual mode and language "throwback to the 50s" in which de Morais' original Theory of Organization is couched, "felt that his ideas needed rejecting". Nonetheless, his format was readily accepted by international organizations over the decades. Van Dam adds that the Latin American "bourgeois establishment" clearly saw peasant autonomy brought about by the OW as "a threat to the established order" and did all in their power to disrupt it, for example by withholding state support.