La Fageda is a Spanish dairy cooperative that employs people with disabilities. For nearly 30 years, it has provided jobs, housing, and activities for people with learning difficulties. It was founded with a social mission by Cristobal Colon to integrate the disabled into the local community through milk production and marketing. The cooperative has been highly successful due to its high quality products and social mission. Any profits are reinvested into creating more jobs and services for its special needs workforce. It is held up as a model of responsible leadership and social entrepreneurship.

1. Cases
Strategy Documents
C05 / 2012
Public Affairs
La Fageda: A responsible,
committed style of
leadership
What do leadership and personal responsibility have in common? And what do
groundbreaking and positive business models have in common with a trace of
madness? The case of the Spanish cooperative milk-products producer La Fageda,
has a bit of all four: for nearly 30 years it has employed a group of people with
learning difficulties and has opened up an important space in the local market.
Is it possible to speak of corporative responsibility without mentioning personal responsibility? Of course it is. The sort of leadership,
which enables a socially responsible business
to exist, is based on a personal and responsible
style. Responsible leaders are naturally optimistic, honest, committed, inspirational, holistic,
consistent and coherent.
For many people, work, developing an activity, is
often something distant from their true personal
interests, from their capabilities, values, passions,
and dreams. In fact, according to Alberto Rivero,
Senior Lecturer in People Management in
Organizations at IESE Business School, there are
three dimensions to the concept of work:
1. The post: in order to have enough
money to support oneself, it has a purely
financial dimension and is merely a way
of earning a living and nothing more.
2. The university career: a way of growing,
improving and developing one’s talents,
as a means to achieving success.
3. The vocation: this has much higher
motivation: for a greater good, a response
to the needs of others, the desire to
change things for the better.
To a certain extent, the same thing occurs
with organizations: only a few years ago,
the purpose of many, in fact most, firms was
relegated to second place at best: after growth
and developing capacity, or just earning money
and surviving. The higher purpose, the will to
transform things, was forgotten.
Personal rather than
corporative responsibility
When discussing personal and corporative
responsibility, it is interesting to look at the views
on the business sector, and philosophical and
psychological thinking of four important figures:
1. Peter Drucker: “We need to accept that
other people are also human beings
and behave as such, that they have
Document prepared by Corporate Excellence with reference to, among other sources, the intervention of Albert Rivera (professor of
People Management in the Organizations Department at IESE) during the sessions of the Executive Education Program “Making Social
Responsibility Work: The Cornerstone of Sustainable Business” organized by IESE Business School in Barcelona in July 2011.

2. La Fageda: A
responsible,
committed style
of leadership
‘What
is also
changing
is the
thinking
about this
success and
how deeply
it is rooted
in a single
and unique
concept of
work, of
business
and of
intelligence’
their own way of doing things, of being,
behaving, deciding, and learning”.
2. Jim Collins: “Humility must be combined
with intense professional will. That is
what makes good organizations great”.
3. Julian Marias: “To be someone is to be
able to be something more. Personal
development is the dichotomy of being who
you are and being who you could be”.
4. Howard Gardner: “Intra-personal intelligence
(self-knowledge, self-awareness and
self-motivation) is important, but so is
interpersonal intelligence (empathy, social
competence), extra-personal intelligence
(political, cultural, social), as well as existential
intelligence (reasoning and a sense of self)”.
This is why, with particular reference to Gardner’s
model of multiple intelligences, one must ask
oneself: What does success really involve? What
are its true indicators? Who chooses it and why?
Because what is also changing and what is behind
the CSR approach, is a person’s own idea of success
and his or her attachment to a single, unique
concept of work, of business and of intelligence.
The selfishness associated by many with the
capitalist economic model - the idea of ‘doing well’
(‘homo economicus’) is often opposed per se to an
approach which also seeks ‘doing good’ (‘homo
sentiens’), which goes beyond the complexity and
paradox of the human being (‘homo duplex’).
Leaders who continually ask themselves why they
are doing what they are doing are those who succeed
in developing a responsible type of leadership,
based on purpose and not only on interest, and
who are able to inspire in others the same sense of
commitment and responsibility.
This is why the personal responsibility of the
leaders of an organization, and that of all the people
who make up the organization, is a necessary prior
Lingüistic
Logical &
Mathematical
Bodily &
Kinesthesic
Musical
Naturalistic
La Fageda, the success of a social dream
What is La Fageda? Where did it get its name?
What is its social and business project? It is a social
initiative in the north of the Spanish autonomous
region of Catalonia, that integrates the physically
disabled and people with learning difficulties
through the production and marketing of yoghurt
and other quality milk-based desserts, made solely
with milk from its own cows, without preservatives
or artificial coloring additives.
The cooperative takes its name from a place known
as ‘La Fageda d’en Jorda’ (the beech glade in Jorda),
in a forested region of Gerona, close to the Pyrenees.
It was created by an entrepreneur whose name is the
same as that of Christopher Columbus in Spanish:
Cristobal Colon, who was closely associated with
the psychiatric world both in a professional capacity
and as a voluntary worker.
The key figure in the management of this project
is Cristobal Colon himself. Besides being the
founder, he is also the managing director. His
mission is to give work in market conditions and
in the local community, to people with learning
difficulties and with severe mental problems who
are able to perform in the workplace, and to
provide them with occupational therapy, lodging
and leisure activities. What began, as a working
cooperative is today a more complex and wideranging structure, consisting of:
• 1 worker and consumer cooperative.
• 2 foundations: one for private capital
and one for welfare assistance.
Multiple intelligence
Visual
condition if one is to speak of a truly responsible
company, whose responsibility is based on the
freely taken decision and will to implement it (the
leader), to do it in conjunction with others (team)
and to give it a higher and far-reaching sense
which goes beyond all of them together (society).
Because the values that they assume are in essence
those that will define who each person is and what
each company is like.
Intrapersonal
Interpersonal
La Fageda cooperative is a non-profit organization,
and so any financial surplus from its business
activities is reinvested to create new jobs in the
firm and to provide more therapeutic services
and assistance for those in its workforce with
special needs. It holds the ISO 14001 certificate
of environmental management; it is signed up to
the Sustainable Business Management Code and
has received awards from the Spanish National
Organization for the Blind (ONCE), the Spanish
Business and Society Foundation (Fundacion
Empresa y Sociedad) and internationally from the
Schwab Foundation.
Source: New Oceans Multiple Intelligences, 2011.
Cases
2

3. La Fageda: A
responsible,
committed style
of leadership
‘Customers
and
consumers
buy the
products
not from a
feeling of
compassion
and
solidarity,
but because
of the
excellent
quality
that they
recognize
in these
products.’
Its success with customers and consumers (it only
sells its products in the Catalan region) is due to
the quality of these products. This is precisely
the key to the continued existence of the firm
in the world of business cooperatives, because
its customers (hypermarkets) and consumers buy
these products in the first place, not from a feeling
of compassion, but for the excellent quality and
careful manufacturing process they recognize in
them. Recently the cooperative has widened its
range to take in other sectors, such as activities
relating to gardening, horticultural nurseries, and
ice-cream production.
Hence, what drives business growth in La Fageda
is the stress on quality, its links to the area where
it is located, and the community in which it
carries out its work, together with the culture of
sustainability and flexibility, which runs through
the whole organization. All the people working in
the cooperative are able to switch their job regularly
between gardening, the care of animals and the
production line, either by asking to do so or at the
request of a member of staff who looks after them.
Positive leadership for social
entrepreneurship
As was said at the start, working in La Fageda
consists in more than holding down a job or making
a career. It gives a sense of dignity, a sense of living
and of healing. To lead the project, assist at its birth
and watch it grow is a sort of vocation exercised
by a leader who is known for his ability to bring
confidence and a positive outlook to others.
Because positive leadership sees an opportunity
where the majority sees none, sees something is
possible where others only see the impossible. It is a
characteristic feature of this type of leadership that
in social entrepreneurial projects such as La Fageda
turn out to be basic, which without it, would never
have been created.
The characteristics of leadership in true Corporate
Social Responsibility, which forms the foundations
of this firm and was its model from the very
beginning, is based on courage but also on selfconfidence, as we said above:
Company virtuous circle
Local and regional
calling
• Self-confidence, which must be closely
linked to responsibility for cost-benefit
analysis, so essential for the viability
and sustainability of the business.
• Confidence, which implies accepting
and assuming risk, beyond what is
reasonable or which may be expected.
• Confidence bordering on madness
in one’s belief in others and in
continuing to search for ability where
the evidence only shows disability.
Positive thinking, as explained by Professor K. S.
Cameron at the University of Michigan, can be
applied successfully as the case of La Fageda shows.
And knowing how to create a positive climate is
also a socially responsible attitude, because through
communication and positive relationships it also
promotes positive feelings, which increase values of
compassion, forgiveness and gratitude.
La Fageda is building social value in three essential
different ways:
1. Relationships: it supports diversity,
unites efforts, gets results and
creates a sense of community.
2. Communication: it generates a constructive
relationship, encourages transparency and
uses communication as an aid (medium).
3. Sense: it affects human well being in a
positive way, it connects with personal values
and enhances their extended impact.
Conclusions: difficulties of a
very personalized leadership
However, this raises some doubts about possible
alternatives in order to ensure the continuity of
the project’s social initiative, bearing in mind its
structure of governance and leadership. Growth
always supposes a certain risk for this type of business
because it can imply the loss of the underlying
essence and meaning.
But doubtlessly, so far La Fageda represents a
particular success story based on a very important
concept for a social and business venture: from
the very beginning the idea was always to create a
business with a soul.
Production
of quality
Customers
Consumer
satisfaction
People with intellectual
disabilities and mental
Source: EOI, 2010.
Cases
3

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