Opting for cooperative self-management: The ethical and job quality motives of service-sector professionals and technicians in Barcelona.

This article examines why and under what circumstances service-sector professionals and technicians in Barcelona have chosen cooperative self-management as a form of employment organization, focusing on knowledge-based occupations such as architects, legal, finance, social sciences, journalism, and digital professionals. Drawing on interviews with 42 participants from 22 worker cooperatives, it highlights motivations beyond economic necessity, including the pursuit of job quality, ethical integrity, democratic governance, and alignment with professional and socio-political values within the framework of the social and solidarity economy (SSE). The cooperative model is presented as enabling these professionals to reclaim the normative social role of their work, fostering meaningful, autonomous, and socially purposeful employment that contrasts with neoliberal capitalist market pressures. The findings contribute to scholarship on job quality and diverse economies by expanding understandings of intrinsic work characteristics, ethical commitments, and economic democracy in knowledge-based cooperative enterprises.