Ballon, Justine <br/><br/>
Managing human resources for social transformation: Three case studies from business and employment cooperatives 

 -  2021.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 40 
<br/><br/> At a time when self-employment is on the rise, Business and Employment Cooperatives (BECs) stand out for the importance they attach to their members’ social protection and autonomy in their work, within a framework that fosters cooperation. This article examines the new experiments carried out by BECs in HRM, by focusing on their social transformation objective of fostering their members’ autonomy through cooperation. This research is based on complementary qualitative surveys of three BECs. From a theoretical standpoint, we combine two fields of HRM literature: one devoted to atypical employment systems in the context of changes at work and the other concerning their application in social and solidarity economy organizations. We propose an initial definition of HRM in BECs based on the distinction of five functions, each associated with management tools characteristic of organizations operating in the gray areas of employment and work, and of the cooperative identity of this organizational model. We discuss the resulting tensions according to four dimensions: autonomy in and through work; training and learning; production cooperation; and the regulation of complex relationships. On the theoretical level, we stress the need to develop HRM conceptual tools in order to consider atypical forms of employment, especially in social and solidarity economy organizations.