Employee Ownership, ESOPs, Wealth, & Wages
This paper by Jared Bernstein shows that employee ownership appears to have a small equalizing impact on wealth and wage distributions.
The Lending Opportunity Generation: FAQs and Case Studies For Investing In Businesses Converting To Worker Ownership
The opportunity to convert businesses to worker cooperatives is increasingly becoming recognized as a strategy for strengthening our local economies. The need—and opportunity—for lenders and other capital providers to participate in these sales transactions is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. But only a handful of lenders in the U.S. specialize in lending … Read More
KTDAL – Building Sustainability through Inclusion
Kenya Tea Development Agency Limited (KTDAL) follows a unique model under which small tea farmers are shareholders. The KTDAL business model, which has made small farming viable, can be replicated to address some of the basic issues and challenges facing the developing world, which has millions of small farmers. However, the model has been facing tough challenges of late. Amidst this uncertainty, some farmers have called for abandoning KTDAL…
Succession at Berrett-Koehler Publishers: Institutionalizing the “BK Way” and Protecting BK Values for Future Success
The Berrett-Koehler (BK) case highlights the efforts of a competitively successful, mission-driven, socially responsible publishing company to preserve its values, culture and practices while ensuring continued future success. The case provides an opportunity to cover corporate governance topics such as: ownership structures, shareholder relations, CEO and organizational succession planning, and board roles and responsibilities.
ESOP and a New Wave of Local Awareness
By taking the great example of regional ESOP promotion pioneers, engaging the University of California in the effort and working to engage other educational institutions as well as leaders in business and the local employee ownership community, we believe that it will be very possible to build strong regional support for the idea that communities ought to be the most active supporters of employee ownership…
Beyster Startup Toolkit: Sharing Equity Ownership
Ultimately, the success of your venture will be determined not by your efforts alone but by the performance of the cast of people — employees, partners, or associates — that you assemble. So, if there is a strategy that can help you get more out of the people on whom you depend and also boost your organizational horsepower, you owe it to yourself to take a serious look. A policy of sharing equity with employees that is designed and used wisely can be just that strategy.
Case Studies: Business Conversions to Worker Cooperatives: Insights and Readiness Factors for Owners and Employees
How does a business go about transitioning —“converting”— to a worker-owned cooperative? This report provides illustrations with case studies of businesses that have converted and highlights key lessons from those companies’ experiences. The report categorizes conversions into four types: Type I: Owner sells to existing employees with the intention of remaining with the company; Type … Read More
Dependency, Poverty and Employee Ownership
In today’s economy, some employees live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to save for a rainy day, let alone retirement. However, an increasingly utilized business model may yield part of the solution. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are a promising alternative to traditional business models…
J. Robert Beyster’s Spirit Lives On
In 1986, Dr. Beyster created the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED) to assist companies and individuals who were interested in furthering the concept of employee ownership, a core principle of Dr. Beyster’s entrepreneurial philosophy…
The Racial Wealth Gap: Narrowing the Racial Wealth Gap Through Business Ownership
This brief focuses specifically on business owners and the racial wealth gap as related to African Americans and Latinos. As a group, Asian Americans face a smaller and narrowing wealth gap, and hold business and financial wealth at the same level as Whites. Native Americans face substantial challenges in creating income and wealth, but the … Read More
The Wealthy and Powerful Discover Inequality
Even the rich are admitting that inequality is bad for business…
The Challenge for Mondragon: Searching for the Cooperative Values in Times of Internationalization
Competitiveness today requires being able to operate at a global scale. The financial crisis invigorated this requirement, posing new challenges to the economic viability of conventional companies and demanding alternative organizational forms of production. Although a wealth of research has focused on capitalist companies, little attention has been paid to the way these challenges affected … Read More
Money Left on the Table: An Analysis of Participation in Employee Stock Purchase Plans
This paper analyzes participation decisions in employee stock purchase plans. These plans allow employees to buy company stock at a discount from the market price and resell it immediately for a sure profit. Although an average employee stands to gain $3,079 annually, only 30% of individuals take advantage of this risk-free opportunity. Participation is more … Read More
Choosing Between Government Procurement Preferences and Employee Ownership
Adworkshop currently is considering a transition to 100 percent employee ownership over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) companies have encountered obstacles when trying to participate in procurement programs…
The End of Illth: In Search of an Economy That Won’t Kill Us
In the wake of the 2010 Massey mining disaster in West Virginia, the author asks whether employee ownership could improve workplace safety, and how such cooperatives might serve as a model for an alternative form of capitalism based on the sustainable use of natural and human resources.
The Art of Social Enterprise: Business as if People Mattered
Aimed at emerging as well as established social entrepreneurs, for-profit leaders who want to introduce an element of social responsibility into their companies, and nonprofit organizations who want to increase their stability by generating income, The Art of Social Enterprise is the definitive guide to doing well while doing good.
Employee Ownership, Incentives and Environmental Sustainability
It is by now common for large corporations to employ several sustainability officers, occasionally in high-ranking positions. A less frequently used tool – employee ownership – may prove a more powerful sustainability over the long term…
Overcoming Short-Termism within British Business: The Key to Sustained Economic Growth
This Review looks at ‘short-termism’ within British business: the pressure to focus on short-term results to the possible detriment of the long-term health of a company, or even a whole industry. The investigation confirmed that short-termism constrains the ambition of UK business, holding back its development and inhibiting economic growth…
The Economy: Under New Ownership
To make an economy that serves us, we need to own the jobs and the businesses—together. How cooperatives are leading the way to empowered workers and healthy communities…
Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work
This film tells the little known stories of employee-owned businesses that compete successfully in today’s economy while providing secure, dignified jobs in democratic workplaces. The film highlights examples including Mondragon in the Basque Country in Spain and the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as smaller businesses including coffee shops and bakeries.
Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution
Looking around at the wreckage left in the wake of the world economy’s latest crisis, veteran business journalist Marjorie Kelly noticed that some institutions were left relatively unscathed. What did they have in common? The key, Kelly realized, is seemingly obscure: ownership. Prominent among the survivors were organizations that combined the flexibility of traditional private ownership with a focus on the common good…
Can There Be “Good” Corporations?
When companies are owned by workers and the community—instead of Wall Street financiers—everything changes.
Re-booting Capitalism: The Action Agenda for Business
Capitalism is living in interesting times. Politicians, academics and activists around the world are debating the merits of the capitalist system, and how and if it could be improved…
Immigrant Worker Owned Cooperatives: A User’s Manual
This booklet provides a “users’ manual” for workers, especially immigrant workers, and their advocates, for organizing a worker-owned cooperative as a worker empowerment strategy.
Open Systems: Applying Diverse Employee Ownership Theories to Address Today’s Complex Challenges
The ideas of employee ownership and various forms of profit sharing in corporations have been around for a long time. The shorthand proposition under study is this: If employees observe that they have a meaningful stake in the fortunes of the enterprise, they create value. More specifically, if they have a financial and emotional stake in the performance of the venture, then as individuals and as a workplace community they will raise the level of their performance and productivity.