Transmission d’entreprises PME saines en Scop au regard de la relève de la direction : une étude exploratoire en France

<p style="text-align: justify;">Drawing on research about handing over family firms, we consider the relevance of the conclusions in the case of turning a healthy SME into a worker cooperative. The focus is on the human aspect of the process, which equally involves the predecessor or seller, the future managing director and the employees. Using the results of a survey of four managing directors of cooperatives that resulted from conversions, we show that the importance of the transition’s explanatory elements – the role of cutting ties, the role of the main stages and the role of employees – should not be overstated. The integration of the new and disengagement of the old are easier than in traditional family-owned companies. Based on the experiences of management changes within worker cooperatives themselves, this exploratory study has thus allowed us to identify the conditions for turning a healthy SME into a worker cooperative at a time when the cooperative movement is more actively committed to this type of cooperative creation than in the past.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>