The Cooperative as a Business Form

It suits us: Each member of the cooperative has a say and is an equal part of the whole. When business is good, everyone benefits from it. People at Tegonal are not subordinated to a rigid hierarchy.

If you want to know more about it or if this kind of business could perhaps also work for your company, we will gladly give you some information over a coffee.

Why we're a cooperative

Tegonal started as a GmbH in 2004. From day one, all partners held equal shares and equal rights. In early 2022, we converted to a cooperative — not because something needed to change, but because the legal form finally matched what we'd been practising all along.

Tegonal's purpose has never been to maximise profit or shareholder value. Our goal is to be a good, flexible employer: fair conditions, meaningful work, fair pay. A cooperative makes it easier to enshrine that. There are no silent partners and no external investors expecting returns. When you join Tegonal, you can become a cooperative member. When you leave, your membership ends with you.

Fair pay, open books

At Tegonal, the maximum salary gap is 20 percent — between the lowest and the highest pay. There's a fixed salary cap. Salaries are transparent.

This isn't an experiment. If everyone contributes equally to the work, pay should reflect that. For comparison: in publicly traded companies, the ratio between the highest and lowest salary is often 100:1 or more.

We take the same approach to pensions. Our pension fund is the Nest Sammelstiftung, which invests ethically, ecologically, and transparently. When we asked our previous pension provider how our retirement savings were being invested, the answer was: "That's our trade secret." That wasn't acceptable to us.

Decisions by consent

Tegonal makes decisions using the consent principle. A decision stands when nobody raises a serious, reasoned objection — not when everyone enthusiastically agrees.

That's an important distinction from consensus. Consensus seeks full agreement and often leads to compromise or deadlock. Consent asks: "Is this proposal good enough for now and safe enough to try?" Anyone who objects must explain why. The objection gets folded into an improved proposal, and the round starts again. This approach, rooted in sociocracy, fits naturally with our agile way of working — and it applies at every level, from project planning to the company's strategic direction.

More than a legal form

For us, the cooperative isn't a legal technicality. It's the structure that makes our way of working possible: no rigid hierarchies, a voice at every level, and the freedom to define your own workload and where you work.

Every member has one vote — regardless of seniority or location. Tegonal is the sum of its people, and the structure should reflect that.