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Voluntary Sustainability Standards, Employee Ownership, and the Sustainable Development Goals: Can VSS Leverage EO to Accelerate Progress Towards the SDGs?

Elizabeth A. Bennett | November, 2024

Employee ownership (EO), broadly defined, refers to business models that distribute power and/or profit more widely than conventional firms. EO aims to foster a more equitable distribution of income and wealth. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 social, economic, and environmental objectives. In 2015, all 193 United Nations member countries agreed … Read More

Cooperatives in Industrial and Service Sectors in the Asia-Pacific Region: Models, Work and Employment, Ecosystem and Public Policies

International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific & International Organisation of the Industrial and Service Cooperatives | September, 2019

What would be the contribution of cooperatives to work and employment? What is the achievement of cooperatives in developing decent work so far and what will be the challenges in the changing world of work?  How can cooperatives provide the younger generation with workplaces and tools for realizing their dreams and ambitions with decent work … Read More

The Municipal Playbook for Employee Ownership

Kyle Funk, Zen Trenholm | January, 2021

The Democracy at Work Institute and the National League of Cities have developed this playbook to assist with integrating employee ownership into municipal economic and workforce development strategies. It offers three approaches that address specific pain points faced by many municipalities: Support legacy businesses in transitioning to employee ownership, Create quality jobs for people who … Read More

Organizational Democracy and Employee Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Organizational Justice

Ahmad Adeel, Kaleem Ahmed, Ramiz Ur Rehman, Rizwan Ali | April, 2019

In the last two decades, scholars have proposed that implementing democratic practices and ideas in organizations results in significant improvements in employees’ attitudes and behavior. Using two widely advocated and debated dimensions of organizational democracy (empowerment and communication), the study provides empirical evidence of the mentioned relationship between organizational democracy and employee outcomes (commitment, citizenship … Read More

Factors Influencing a Black Small Business Owner’s Decision to Sell their Business to a Worker Cooperative

Oyindamola A. Ijewere | September, 2024

This brief reports on interviews with eleven Black small business owners focusing on their expectations around succession planning, and the impact that awareness of worker cooperatives would have on their decision-making process to sell their business to a worker cooperative when they decide to exit their business. An exit from their business also includes retirement … Read More

Apis & Heritage Legacy Fund I (A&H)

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | December, 2022

This mini-case study describes the Apis & Heritage Legacy Fund I (A&H), a private equity fund from Apis & Heritage Capital Partners LLC, that seeks to tackle the racial wealth gap and improve workplace outcomes by expanding employee ownership. A&H acquires profitable, privately held companies from retiring owners and converts them into 100% employee-owned businesses.

Employee Ownership Trusts and Perpetual Purpose Trusts in the United States

Anne Claire Broughton, Derek Razo, Joseph Blasi, Mark Hand, Zoe Schlag | November, 2022

This is a working database of purpose trusts in the United States published in partnership with Common Trust, Broughton Consulting, and Liminal Advisors. It is maintained by the DCII Research Cluster on Employee Ownership and Workplace Democracy (www.eowd.org), with initial funding from the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers … Read More

Strategies to Advance Black Employee Ownership

Project Equity | June, 2023

Despite the enormity of the racial wealth gap in our country, the current conversation around Black wealth is healthy. Across every sector, and within every stakeholder group, many extraordinary Black business and economic leaders are convening and engaging in productive conversations about the state of Black America and the future of Black economic prosperity. We … Read More

Employee Ownership In the Americas. A Path To Shared Prosperity

Aitzol Loyola Idiaquez, Christopher George Cooper, Dan Weltmann, Diógenes Lagos Cortés, Douglas Kruse, Frank Shipper, Frederick Freundlich, Gonzalo Hernández Gutiérrez, Ion Lezeta, José Bayardo Pérez Arce, Joseph Blasi, Maite Legarra Eizagirre, Mariana Comellini, Mary Ann Beyster, Michael Louis Palmieri, Miguel Ignacio Cordova Espinoza, Nicolas Aubert, Rodrigo Zuloaga Fernández del Valle, Rolando Andrés Roncancio Rachid, Verónica Cortiñas | November, 2023

This book is a collaborative effort of academics, researchers, and professionals from US, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, France, Spain, and Colombia. Its pages contribute to the construction of an economic democracy while promoting a movement that stimulates growth, strengthens businesses, contributes to improving wages and savings whilst dignifying workers and building social progress. Employee Ownership in … Read More

HDR – Building a Global Employee Ownership Culture

Lorin Busaan, Simon Pek | August, 2023

This teaching case study explores the dynamics and evolution of employee ownership in HDR, a large multinational professional services firm. Broad-based employee ownership has strong affinities with professional services firms, whose success largely depends on the knowledge and capabilities their employees bring to their work. As HDR grew and expanded internationally, it had to address … Read More

Defining Employee Ownership: Four Meanings and Two Models (Working Paper #3)

Christopher Mackin | January, 2023

The field of broad-based employee ownership within corporations is a specific application of the foundational topic of property ownership. It is situated at the intersection of a broad range of scholarly disciplines including economics, law, finance and management. Each discipline contributes vocabulary and distinctions describing this field. That broad spectrum of disciplinary inquiry is a … Read More

Employee Ownership and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa – A Discussion

Graeme Nuttall, Shaun Smit | January, 2023

This exploration of how employee ownership fits within South Africa’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment framework was presented as part of the “Employee Ownership in South Africa” session at the 2023 Kelso Workshop. The interview of Shaun Smit,  a transaction advisor with Transcend advisors in South Africa, was conducted by Graeme Nutall OBE, Fieldfisher Partner and … Read More

Obran Cooperative, LCA

Camille Kerr | December, 2022

Obran is a cooperatively owned holding company with a related financing arm. It recently acquired a 50-person home health care business based in Los Angeles and the cooperative is under letter of intent (LOI) for a 100-person home health business serving the Bay Area.  With this unique model, the cooperative’s leadership seeks to create quality … Read More

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Cleveland Clinic

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry’s partnership with Cleveland Clinic is perhaps the best-known example of an “anchor institution” approach to economic development in the United States. The worker-owned business is the primary laundry vendor for the Cleveland Clinic’s entire northeast Ohio area. Their experience to date suggests that it is indeed possible for a health system … Read More

Five Point Holistic Health

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

This case study examines Five Point Holistic Health, the Chicago health center organized as a worker cooperative. The center offers acupuncture, psychotherapy, and bodywork treatments and services. From its earliest days, the worker-owners of Five Point have prioritized making its services affordable and accessible to the community.  After years of hard work, they have achieved … Read More

Five Home Care Cooperatives in Washington State

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

No other state has as many individual home care cooperatives in operation as Washington. Although small and limited to date to serving the private pay market, Washington’s home care cooperatives suggest that “another way is possible” for organizing home care provision in the state. The business model they are piloting breaks with dominant, extractive, models … Read More

PT360: Vermont Physical Therapy Cooperative

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

This case study examines the only physical therapy practice in the country to be structured as a worker cooperative.  Founded in 2010 by 12 coworkers who left their previous employer to start their own practice together, PT360 has grown to become the largest independent physical therapy practice in the state of Vermont. It now has … Read More

AlliedUP: A Worker-Owned Healthcare Staffing Cooperative Transforms Temporary Work

Minsun Ji | December, 2022

Contingent workers make up a large part of today’s healthcare workforce, and the healthcare industry is America’s most contingent worker-dependent industry. While contingent healthcare workers overall earn low pay with few benefits, contingent work burdens fall most heavily on women of color, due to deep race and gender-based inequalities that have long plagued the healthcare … Read More

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