Transformative entrepreneurial ecosystems and ‘economic othering’: empirical insights from worker-led companies in Hamburg and Berlin

Materialities at the margin

Grounded in our adaptation of EE material attributes by Spigel (2017) (see Figure 2), the following figure (Figure 3) provides a comparative overview of the cases of Hamburg and Berlin in this regard.

Thus, in terms of material attributes the collaborative networks of WLCs show strong parallels to traditional examples of EEs. As can be seen, in both cases, the interviewed WLCs consider the urban environment with connected access to a broad client network and access to (digital) infrastructure as beneficial.

Beyond this more general observation, there are specific location factors that differ between the two cases. In the case of Hamburg, the harbour plays a crucial role for the coffee WLCs in Hamburg as it enables short transportation routes for the coffee beans as an import good. Here, it becomes already apparent how material attributes are interwoven with entrepreneurial norms and values because not only do the coffee WLCs see the benefits of reduced costs but also of reduced CO₂ emissions. A specific relevant location factor of Berlin is the city’s political function as Germany’s capital:

‘Berlin is the capital of NGOs, and politics just takes place there. I think it's simply an important place to be present and to take part’ (Med3_B).

Moreover, Berlin has a strong reputation as a start-up hub and has a beneficial environment for social innovation (Kritikos, 2016; McFarlane et al., 2023; Wöbken, 2022). This includes support services, such as funding, conferences or consultancy, factors that create a beneficial climate for entrepreneurial creativity and risk taking. In a more emergent way, interview participants from Hamburg observe similar developments by referring to impact hubs or start-up events. Yet, it is quite apparent that the density of collaboration and the number of industries involved are relatively small compared to the collaborative WLC network in Berlin. This might be partly due to the generally higher density of enterprises in Berlin (over 60 cross-references identified, without claim to be exhaustive) compared to Hamburg (a concentrated core of around 20–30 WLCs). As a further material attribute that fosters proximity, some of Berlin’s WLC positively referred to ‘their Kiez’ – a local term used to describe small neighbourhood districts with coffee places, restaurants, parks, etc. with whom their inhabitants associate a sense of belonging and common social identity (Bentlin and Behrend, 2023). Particularly, in terms of shared infrastructure the combination of spatial proximity and social trust through a shared sense of belonging, the Kiez culture was considered as very beneficial for Berlin’s WLC collaborations.

The establishment and maintenance of shared spaces and infrastructures was a central element of cooperation in both cities. The interviewed WLCs in both Hamburg and Berlin reported on examples of shared infrastructure to reduce costs and support each other in their entrepreneurial activities. As illustrated in the following, these examples mainly evolve around specific industries, namely, the coffee industry in Hamburg:

‘We roast coffee at another Coffee WLC every three weeks. Then we rent a place there and pay a fee for roasting. There’s also some of our coffee in the cellar’ (Cof3, HH).

As the coffee industry is the most prominent one in Hamburg, they managed to set an example both for other non-coffee WLCs and for coffee non-WLCs. Particularly, the shared infrastructures fostered principles of mutual support and solidarity while simultaneously allowing for financial efficiency. In a similar vein, the construction industry in Berlin created shared infrastructures, including a shared pool of resources and a shared customer network:

‘In Berlin there are about five or six WLCs that are involved in the construction industry with different focal points. For example, there is a metalworking WLC. We always use their structures if we need to build something with metal. Or a painting WLCs from which we get our painting colors and wood oils. We’re also planning together construction sites, wherever it fits’ (Con3_B).

Also, a joint presentation at networking events was mentioned several times as illustrated by the example from the beverage industry in Berlin:

‘There was a trade fair “Future Festivals” […] and such a festival needs drinks. So we made a booth together with other WLCs […] We could share the cost of registration for a small stand there, where we then stood in the name of our four companies. The aim is that we are perceived together’ (FB1_B).

In concert with the material attribute of ‘support services’ in cases of traditional EEs, there is access to support organizations that offer advisory services for already existent and emerging WLCs, in both cities. However, while in Berlin, there is a variety of such support organizations, there is mostly one central contact point for WLCs in Hamburg: the umbrella organization KdS that was positively mentioned across most of conversations with Hamburg’s WLCs. Closely collaborating with the Free Workers Union Hamburg (FAU), they took it on as their task to provide information and support on how to build and maintain a WLC. Beyond these informational and advisory tasks, together they organize regular networking events to increase cooperation and exchange between WLCs in Hamburg, which were often a point of reference during the interviews, as expressed by one member of a Coffee WLC:

‘I am always at the collective networking meeting, which is once a month. An open meeting at the FAU, the “black cat.” And there are often other WLCs from Hamburg’ (Cof3_HH).

Yet, there appears to be very little supportive institutional infrastructure in the form of organizational or legal support besides the aforementioned umbrella organization. This is also pointed out by one of the coffee WLCs:

‘In Berlin, existing associations ensure that there are more well-founded foundations of collectives than in other cities. Here in Hamburg, we've had about 15 new collective foundations in Hamburg in the last few years. However, I wouldn't say that Hamburg is a stronghold of collectives. It's more like Berlin or Kassel or Wendland’ (Cof1_HH).

This observation corresponds to the data from Berlin that reveal a decentralized broader and more diverse set of actors and support services. This includes a set of organizational experts, diverse consulting companies who support and advise WLCs as well as legal experts who support WLCs to find an adequate legal form. Or as they describe it:

‘We took legal advice in the early days. I don't know if you know [Law Expert 2]. They are actually lawyers who do a lot of work in the collective field, including workshops. Together with them, we decided on this business model’ (EN3_B).

Thus, in contrast to the Hamburg case, WLCs in Berlin are additionally supported by assisting external actors, such as consulting associations/companies, umbrella organizations and legal experts. In consequence, some of the tasks that WLCs in Hamburg must integrate into their daily business can be externalized in Berlin, which fosters increased (productive) efficiency and leaves more time for other kinds of activities. Furthermore, several WLCs mention regular research participation to increase the visibility of their economic structures and practices. Yet, in a similar vein, research participation is often done outside of their regular company activities, leading to increased workload.

Overall, our findings indicate that material attributes that would typically support conventional EEs are only partially supportive of the examined cases. However, both cases show similar network structures grounded in a more-than-capitalist understanding of entrepreneurship, which supports their conceptualization of TEEs in terms of material attributes. Findings also revealed that the overall material context is more supportive in the Berlin case than in the Hamburg case, which underlines the importance to having a nuanced perspective on local context conditions within a broader national context. Lastly, while not unimportant, material attributes seem to play a rather secondary role compared to sociocultural attributes, which are presented in the following.

Practicing collaboration and solidarity beyond the scope of a company – Sociocultural values at the core

Visible in the examples of shared infrastructures and joint events, collaboration and solidarity play a major role within the explored WLC networks in Hamburg and Berlin. With a focus on sociocultural attributes, data from both cities disclose dense social networks both within and across industries (see Figure 4 below). Furthermore, interviewed WLC actors from both locations share a critical perspective on (purely) capitalist structures and the mission to combine entrepreneurship with societal and/or political engagement. This supports the suggested conceptualization of both cases as TEEs as both show characteristics of EEs, yet in a transformative manner.

While both cases share more-than-capitalist entrepreneurial beliefs, there are a few distinctions that can be attributed to the different local contexts. With respect to relevant industries, the coffee industry and the IT industry play a major role for the collaborative WLC network in Hamburg. Particularly two IT WLCs are politically engaged in beyond-capitalist forms of economy in connection with KdS. Moreover, there is a strong collaborative network among IT WLCs that have a ‘Genossenschaft (eG) ² ’ and are engaged in improving conditions in Germany for eG as an alternative legal form to organize a company. As one reason for this, several of the interview partners point out the increased security of their legal form, as the company’s profit can legally only be used to serve its members. So private profit distribution for only a small number of people is impossible in their legal framework. An especially interesting case is IT13_HH where the former employers sold their company to their employees and changed the legal form for this purpose.

Collaboration and mutual support within the coffee industry could be observed in terms of shared infrastructure (as discussed in part IV.1), but also in creation of a joint product under the label of ‘solidarity coffee’. In 2025, 3 years after the initial interviews, they reported on a national collaboration network for coffee WLCs, which demonstrates that their efforts were fruitful. Beyond business relations, most of the surveyed and interviewed coffee WLCs do not only identify themselves as coffee companies but also as political actors, mostly with a critical perspective on current capitalist economic structures. Or in their words:

‘We do coffee trade and coffee trade is always based on disgusting colonialism and worst exploitation and destroys nature, no matter how we do it. It’s quite clear that if you still want to look in the mirror, you have to do things quite differently than usual. And you have to do it in a really reflective and careful way. The fact that we now only grow organic coffee is not enough’ (Cof1_HH).

An interesting aspect of this political activism is the international collaboration with Mexican Zapatista coffee cooperatives, which demonstrate how they implement their values beyond the local scale of their WLCs. Furthermore, they share the reference point to the Zapatista movement which is also well-established in more-than-capitalist theories and the notion of a ‘pluriverse’ (see Kothari et al., 2019 for an overview).

While so far, the differences to growth-oriented EEs have manifested rather implicitly, these quotes give insights into the underlying beliefs on entrepreneurship that go beyond a focus on growth and profit accumulation. Combining the need for economic security with a more-than-capitalist orientation, one coffee WLC is especially successful and therefore plays a major supporting role for others. In the interviews, they shared that from an early stage onwards they wanted to prevent themselves from becoming too ‘greedy’ in case of success. Hence, they established an internal contract to limit their profit and organize redistribution in the event they reached this limit. Being financially very successful, they can now implement their redistribution according to this plan. ³ Beyond financial support, they also provide advisory support and consultation to other WLCs, drawing on their own experiences. This corresponds well to findings from research on growth-oriented EEs and the attributed importance of role models and mentors.

Like the coffee industry in Hamburg, Berlin’s WLCs in the craft and construction industry identify strongly with left-winged political values. Organized in an informal industry-specific network, they do not only support each other with their expertise in different fields and collaborate in ongoing projects. They also engage politically and translate these values into their (daily) work. One example is the application of solidarity pricing and the implementation of projects that they are not paid for:

‘It’s not our free time; it’s our wage job. That's why we can't support all of them, but we try to redistribute a little bit. We adjust our prices when some projects have less [resources] and other groups have more, and we try to make that transparent. We also try to offer possibilities how we can make things less expensive. For example, we offer to teach how to do things yourself. You don't necessarily have to pay us for that’ (Con1_B).

Equivalent to Hamburg’s coffee role model, two woodwork and gardening WLCs in Berlin are important actors in the maintenance of their intra-industrial networks. While one is a little less financially successful, they both play a major supporting role for others. Particularly impressive for both is that they are not only engaged in collaboration and networking with other WLCs within and beyond their industry but also regularly participate in industry-specific events with more conventional companies, such as events by a nationwide federation for garden landscape construction. With this, they hope to increase the visibility of other forms of work and economic structures beyond their ‘social bubble’.

Regarding cross-industry collaboration, comparably few cross-industry relations could be observed in Hamburg. Several WLCs from different industries mentioned the difficulties to maintain networking activities that are external to their daily work and cannot directly be implemented in their respective productive and entrepreneurial activities, as illustrated by the following quote.

‘I watch with a quiet sorrow and a little guilty conscience how there's actually a lot happening right now. I see that and I read that and I think “I just don't have the energy to be there.” They always invite to new meetings. I think I'm supposed to go, but I can't get it done. I just… I'm doing 24-hour/week in our shop. I'm doing 20 hours/week on another project at the game studio, and I have two little kids’ (FB1_HH).

In consequence, it is unsurprising that the intra-industry cooperation is stronger and more densely organized than the cross-industry cooperative activities in Hamburg. In contrast, in the case of Berlin, it felt like a never-ending network as new relations and cross-references kept appearing during the process of interviewing and analysis. ⁴ Thus, in comparison, the WLC network in Hamburg still has a more emerging character. In this regard, it is interesting to observe that many of the interviewed WLCs in Hamburg mentioned cooperation with and inspiration from WLCs in Berlin. Thus, we can tentatively assume a pioneering role for the Berlin TEE in Hamburg.

The openness to finding intersections and collaborating between these different spheres was not only connected to the political environment but also to the overall cultural attitude and atmosphere in Berlin. There seems to be a high level of risk-taking and experimentation, which is combined with strong political and societal engagement, described as follows:

‘I think Berlin is like that because there’s a lot of people there, of course, and they just live differently, lead a different life. More freely and self-determined. Otherwise, they would not live in Berlin’ (CE1_B).

Another particularity of Berlin is its history of entrepreneurship. During the time of the GDR regime, worker cooperatives and production cooperatives were a common model: every seventh worker was working in a Genossenschaft at the end of the 1980 (Beywl, 1991: 37). Yet, in the transition processes of the reunification only a small number of the former Eastern German worker cooperatives survived: they either went bankrupt, got bought out or changed their legal form into a GmbH. ⁵ In research, reasons for this were seen in the lack of institutional support in the reunification processes, and in existing prejudices and reservations against this company model because it was associated to the GDR control regime (Metz, 1991; Schultz, 2008). These findings align with empirical insights from the qualitative interviews: some of the older WLCs had their roots in the Eastern German regime and could share firsthand experiences of the reunification process.

Beyond these city-specific sociocultural attributes, in both cases, the political engagement to change societal and economic structures is often based on a critical perspective of the involved actors towards capitalism. Many of the surveyed WLCs strive for – and already live – more-than-capitalist forms of economic organization. This is how two of them describe their visions and motivations:

‘We hope that we can contribute to spread emancipatory thoughts in society and that society will change its way of thinking. Or maybe just a large part of society, which would also have consequences. This includes throwing the capitalist logic of exploitation overboard, i.e. proceeding in a needs-oriented manner and also understanding that doing so harms no one’ (Con1_B).

A further observation is the apparent divide between left-wing political WLCs and those that identify with the social entrepreneurship sector. There seems to be little contact and cooperation among WLCs associated with the social entrepreneurship sector. Some even actively distance themselves from this sector. As one WLC describes it:

‘The problem is that the term “worker-led collective” is not protected. Any start-up can call itself a worker-led collective. But they are not a political collective, they just work together. They do have a boss and they're using these structures to act in a capitalistic way, in the sense that it's all about increasing capital and about [economic] growth. That's just not true for us. We don't want to grow for the sake of growth’ (EN1_HH).

In the Berlin case, despite the active political engagement equivalent to findings from Hamburg, there are much stronger ties to the social entrepreneurship sector. For example, some of the beverage WLCs maintain a close association with Berlin’s social entrepreneurship and start-up scene. In this context, several of them are also part of the so-called ‘Good Food Collective’, which also includes non-worker-led companies from the organic food and beverage industry.

The attitude towards social entrepreneurship and ‘new work’ in start-ups and progressive companies appears to remain a controversial topic across the industries and locations. While there is consent on the value of increased codetermination at work, the opinions differ on what is considered as a form of ‘democracy-washing’ and what is considered authentic and consequent enough.

‘I distance myself from the companies that say: “Hey, we are now the new society, the new New York. We are now doing holocracy, because that is the solution to all problems.” I sometimes have the feeling with organizations that this is such a hype right now. I believe that this doesn’t change the principles of work, but that it rather shifts the problem elsewhere’ (Med3_B).

Based on the fear of reproducing what they seek to change, this perspective reveals a strong group identity opposed to companies that prioritize economic growth. It also implies the acceptance of one’s own position as an economic ‘other’ in resistance to hegemonic profit-driven forms of companies. This is particularly interesting when analysed through the lens of ‘economic othering’, which will be taken up in the discussion.

In terms of cooperation, the embeddedness of WLC networks on a national scale is a final sociocultural attribute that we shortly want to highlight. As illustrated in the following quote, there are many relations and references to WLCs in other German cities and the participation in the nation-wide engagement for WLCs.

‘We are looking for committed nationwide networking in terms of higher-level solidarity and higher-level structures. We are thinking nationwide, and we will certainly establish structures for this in the next year and a half’ (Cof1_HH).

Similar observations could be made in the case of Berlin, both in intra-industrial and cross-industrial forms of cooperation. Furthermore, ongoing activities are underway to establish a nationwide collaborative WLC network, aiming to increase mutual support and skill sharing. In 2025, 3 years after the initial interviews, several WLCs reported that the nationwide umbrella organization for WLCs in Germany is now established. This aspect further supports the stated hypothesis that sociocultural attributes play a more relevant role in the establishment and maintenance of the analysed WLC networks than material ones. Overall, it became visible that more-than-capitalist entrepreneurial beliefs decisively influence the economic structures and practices within the examined networks. While they show sociocultural attributes that correspond to conventional EEs, they diverge from conventional EEs in the ways these attributes manifest.

TEEs and entrepreneurial beliefs

The most striking difference is diverging ‘underlying entrepreneurial beliefs’ between examples from traditional EE literature and the examined cases. These divergences influence many aspects of the EEs and the entrepreneurial process. These underlying beliefs manifest themselves in several regards: In both cities, there seems to be a consensus to think and live work and production structures beyond profit accumulation.

For example, the role-model character of established WLCs that limit their profit or work with solidarity prices highlights the more-than-capitalist logic found in the examined EEs, which also leads to a different measurement of ‘success’ and of ‘good’ pioneering examples. Other examples are the sharing of tools, infrastructure and knowledge tailored to the skills and resources of the WLCs involved, or unpaid advice services from more established WLCs. This corresponds to already existing research insights of shared infrastructures and resources, which is viewed as beneficial both in terms of efficiency and productivity (e.g. Duran et al., 2025; Hajli et al., 2025; Muldoon et al., 2023) and as more-than-capitalist practice to counteract harmful tendencies of resource overuse (e.g. Chatterton and Pusey, 2020; Kanda et al., 2025; Liodaki et al., 2025). While in the cases at hand, these sharing practices are clearly linked to joint engagement in societal and political activities, this might be a potential common ground to bridge different entrepreneurial beliefs.

Combining more-than-capitalist practices with efficient economic organization, the EEs in Hamburg and Berlin challenge, extend and diversify conventional understandings of entrepreneurial ecosystems and can therefore be understood as expressions of Transformative Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. With a clear focus on purposeful work and a positive social (and in some cases ecological) impact through their entrepreneurial activities, they illustrate how TEEs can be established and maintained in coexistence to more conventional onesAn overview, including examples of othering (discussed below) is provided in Table 1 in the Appendix. In consequence and corresponding to research from Schmid (2019) with a focus on maker spaces and Hug et al. (2022) with a focus on firm-level agency, our empirical findings help to enhance the spectrum of potential transformative actors and the potentially transformative (economic) geographies they create and maintain through their decisions and actions.

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Table 1.

Contextual EE attributes compared with regard to economic othering and transformative practices.

Contextual attributes	Conventional practices	Othering	Transformative practices
3.1 Material attributes
3.1.1 Physical infrastructures	• Influence of location factors on prominence of specific industries	N/A	• ‘Kiez’ culture: Strong local collaboration within small local districts in Berlin
3.1.2 Support services	• Network of legal and organizational experts in Berlin	• No recorded WLC-specific publicly funded support programs • No recorded institutionalized support and mentoring programs	• WLC-tailored cross-industrial umbrella organization in Hamburg • Foundation of a WLC-tailored trade union specifically tailored to Berlin a • Engagements to create WLC-tailored digital infrastructure to simplify democratic decision-making
3.1.3 Institutional frameworks	N/A	• No existing adequate legal forms for WLCs in Germany • Legal form of ‘eG’ connected to increased bureaucratic efforts • No recorded university collaborations • No recorded collaborations with other formation programs or institutions like the employment agency	• Engagements to improve conditions for the legal form of ‘eGs’ • Engagements to create nationwide WLC-network • Engagements for creation of adequate legal form on a policy-level
3.1.4 Local market conditions	• Equal industry-specific price and service conditions to ‘conventional’ products/services within metropolitan environments	• Competition-based market conditions that incentive profit-accumulation: ‘Alternative’ practices not recognized as ‘real’ forms of market exchange by other market participants	• TEE-internal forms of (market) exchange that are not based on money or competition
	• Beneficial high risk-taking and innovation-based market environment in Berlin
3.2 Sociocultural attributes
3.2.1 Beliefs on entrepreneurship	• Necessity to generate an income to provide for a living	• Un(der)recognition of more-than-capitalist economic practices	• Active profit limitation and redistribution practices that are implemented and regarded as exemplary
	• Necessity to stay ‘marketable’ in order to survive as an enterprise	• ‘Post-growth’ values are regarded as ideological while ‘growth’ values are taken as premise	• Political engagement for more solidary and collaboration-based economic practices
3.2.2 Local histories of entrepreneurship	• Relevance of best-practice cases as point of reference	• Reduced amount of prominent (visible) examples with a long-living tradition • Partly prejudices against ‘socialist’ forms of enterprises due to associations with the GDR regime	• Partly positive associations to already established concepts of WLC in former East Germany • Long-living examples of WLCs and other forms of ‘alternative’ economic practices in Berlin • Known concepts such as ‘community-based agriculture’ or open-access as over-regional points of reference
3.2.3 Social networks	• Importance of a dense social networks with shared entrepreneurial values to share skills, knowledge and potential client networks	• Few overlaps between social networks of WLCs and social networks of ‘conventional’ companies • Caution/mistrust to collaborate out of fear to get manipulated • Strong sense of ‘otherness’ based on perceived value-incompatibility	• TEE-internal forms of (market) exchange that are not based on money or competition, such as solidarity prices, skill- and tool-sharing • Engagement for a nationwide TEE of WLCs
3.2.4 Mentors & role models	• Relevance of established supportive enterprises: Inclusion of start-ups & newcomers	• Reduced amount of mentors and role models due to the ‘minority’/’niche’ character of the WLC form	• Experimental ‘learning-by-doing’ attitude • Strong sense of willingness to support and help by established WLCs based on a strong group identity as ‘other’/’different’
3.2.5 Pool of skills and competences	• Relevance of well-skilled and competent members of the EE	• Measurements of skills and competences differ depending on underlying entrepreneurial beliefs • Un(der)recognition of skills and competences beyond their benefits for profit-generation	• Explicit recognition of care activities and voluntary forms of work as skills and competences • Employment strategies beyond conventional application processes

TEEs and economic othering

As a crucial difference to more traditional examples of EEs, it becomes evident that the analysed TEEs are neither ‘backed-up’ through policies or state-funded programs nor made visible through collaboration with public institutions such as universities or employment agencies, leading to relatively high bureaucratic, financial and temporal costs. While Spigel (2017) mentions institutionalized support services and funding support as well university collaborations as crucial attributes for a thriving EE, we did not find any evidence for such services, infrastructures or collaborations that tailored to more-than-capitalist economic structures and practices, which were not ‘self-made’ by the concerned WLCs.

As proposed in the theoretical part, we consider the perspective of ‘relational othering’ helpful: While growth-oriented forms of companies are mainstreamed as ‘normal’, different ways of economic organizing such as the illustrative example of WLCs are ‘othered’ as the so-called ‘alternative’ forms. This not only leads to a lack of recognition but also to a lack of institutionalized support tailored to WLCs. In 2025, 3 years after the initial interviews, several WLCs reported that the increasing popularity of right-winged political discourses and budget cuts in both the sustainable and cultural industries further increased these tendencies.

Perceived as ‘niche’ or as form of ideological experimentation, there is also a limited number of local histories of best practices, which in traditional EES is an important factor.

As displayed in Figure 5, this established historically grown predominance of growth-oriented structures and practices and the framing of diverging structures and practices as ‘other’ or ‘alternative’ prevents (infra-)structural and institutionalized support of transformative practices that might be more beneficial and efficient to achieve increased socioecological justice and well-being.OPEN IN VIEWER

Furthermore, this binary conception of ‘the normal’ and ‘the other’ also prevents mutual learning potentials since strong group identities are built around being ‘the norm’ or ‘the other’. One of the consequences is the risk of a less nuanced view on which kinds of economic practices and structures make sense in which cases, grounded in loyalty towards the own group and the fear of identity loss. Afraid to reproduce the labour-exploitative structures they seek to transform, many WLCs see the danger of ‘democracy-washing’ and are cautious to collaborate with ‘conventional’ enterprises. Thus, while the fact of being ‘othered’ limits transformative economic action through institutional barriers, it simultaneously has a reinforcing effect on a joint group identity among ‘like-minded’ and a shared transformative agency, which we perceive as an interesting paradox. Corresponding to existing findings on dynamics of ‘othering’ from, for example,, Van Merriënboer et al. (2025) or Merino et al. (2025), this shows how the external framing as ‘other’ affects the internal socioeconomic identity of the WLCs. This partly leads to dynamics of strong resistance and opposition, yet increased solidarity within the ‘othered group’, which Merino et al. (2025: 4) frame as ‘alternative-oppositional’.

Yet, in conversations with the WLCs it also became obvious how many of their transformative practices are already challenging the constructed binary of ‘mainstream-alternative’ economies. In consequence, in cases where they managed to interpret and use existing structures in new ways they already enact more-than-one economic practices that correspond to the Zapatista notion of a pluriverse in which multiple world visions can not only coexist but also mutually enrich each other. Examples are the re-interpretation of existing legal frameworks, efficient collective decision-making strategies, profit-limitations that also can ensure long-term financial stability and caring work structures that prevent burnouts and health problems among the worker-owners. Going beyond framing of ‘the norm’ and ‘the other’, these experiences could be beneficial for any kind of EE, fostering a higher diversity of economic practices that can be adapted to the challenges at hand.OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 5.

TEEs and economic othering (own illustration).

In terms of relational economic othering and global power dynamics, it is crucial to acknowledge that WLCs still hold a role as ‘conventional market players’ in the form of a company in the Global North embedded in global value chains. Here again, multiple binaries become visible as WLCs are ‘othered’ in some regards but also hold power and occupy hegemonic positions in other regards. Thus, their role as German companies positioned in a (global) competition-based market comes with privileges and limitations equally. Evidence from the interviews shows that there is an awareness of the own capacities and privileges, which is combined with a motivation to change harmful practices. Yet, WLCs still need to partly conform to growth-based incentives to ensure their survival, which runs the risk of reproducing the structures they seek to transform.