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.
Reimagining Capitalism
This special edition of The Nation brings together a wide range of articles on new ways to shape capitalism, and to work on economic recovery.
Inclusive Capitalism for the American Workforce: Reaping the Rewards of Economic Growth through Broad-based Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
What can be done to reverse the economic disparity in our nation and restore prosperity for all? This paper lays out a policy reform that will help restore the link between economic growth and the earnings of workers so that the recovery re-establishes a prosperous middle class. The reform encourages firms to develop broad-based incentive compensation systems that link employee earnings to the performance of the firm. This reform would give employees access to the capital-related earnings of their companies comparable to that of the senior executives who run these firms.
Employee Ownership, Democratic Control, and Working-Class Empowerment
Organizational scholars and workplace equality advocates have largely dismissed the ability of democratic employee ownership to deliver power and autonomy to working-class employees. This chapter addresses this gap by investigating how two 100% employee-owned and democratically governed worker-owned cooperatives (businesses where employees are both the owners and the directors of their workplaces) succeeded and failed … Read More
European Federation of Employee Share Ownership
The European Federation of Employee Share Ownership (EFES) acts as the umbrella organization of employee owners, companies and all persons, trade unions, experts, researchers, institutions looking to promote employee ownership and participation in Europe.
Employee Ownership Australia and New Zealand
Employee Ownership Australia and New Zealand (EOA) was formed in July 2011 out of the Australian Employee Ownership Association (AEOA). EOA has the same principles as those shared of the AEOA’s founders. When AEOA was formed by 20 companies in 1986 its principles were to be a member-focused, non-profit association. Its purpose was to assist members with their employee ownership (or co-ownership) plan, employee engagement and involvement and employee participation levels
Trends in Employee Ownership: Important Demographic Developments
As the baby boom approaches retirement, prospects for employee ownership are ramping up…
Mid-Missouri Energy: Ethanol from Corn
Mid-Missouri Energy is a farmer-owned cooperative created to take advantage of the growing interest in ethanol as an automotive fuel.
Who Benefits from Shared Capitalism? The Social Stratification of Wealth and Power in Companies with Employee Ownership
This paper analyzes social stratification in patterns of access to shared capitalism programs, the value of shared capitalist plan assets, and access to workplace power and authority in a sample of over 40,000 employees in 14 companies with various forms of shared capitalism in the United States.
Show Me the Money: Does Shared Capitalism Share the Wealth?
This paper examines the effect of a variety of employee stock ownership programs – including ESOPs and broad based stock options – on employees’ holdings of their employers’ stock, their earnings and their wealth.
Shared Capitalism in the US Economy: Prevalence, Characteristics, and Employee Views of Financial Participation in Enterprises
Between one-third and one-half of employees participate directly in company performance through profit sharing, gain sharing, employee ownership, or stock options.
Worker Responses to Shirking Under Shared Capitalism
Group incentive systems have to overcome the free rider or 1/N problem, which gives workers an incentive to shirk, if they are to succeed.
Risk and Lack of Diversification Under Employee Ownership and Shared Capitalism
This paper addresses whether the risk in shared capitalism makes it unwise for most workers or whether the risk can be managed to limit much of the loss of utility from holding the extra risk.
Complementarity of Shared Compensation and Decision-Making Systems: Evidence from the American Labor Market
In the 1990s an increasing proportion of US firms moved toward compensation systems that made part of pay depend on the economic performance of work-groups or the firm.
How Does Shared Capitalism Affect Economic Performance in the United Kingdom?
This paper uses nationally representative linked workplace-employee data from the British 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the operation of shared capitalist forms of pay—profit-sharing and group pay for performance, employee share ownership, and stock options—and their link to productivity.
Do Workers Gain by Sharing? Employee Outcomes Under Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing, and Broad-Based Stock Options
Apart from the extreme cases that get publicized, are employee stock ownership plans generally good or bad for workers?
Does Employee Ignorance Undermine Shared Capitalism?
This paper analyzes a survey of employees from multiple companies to assess the extent to which employees are ignorant about company, group, and individual-based incentive pay plans and ESOPs.
Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach
Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach was first published in 1984 as a part of the Pitman series in Business and Public Policy. Its publication proved to be a landmark moment in the development of stakeholder theory.
The Employee Ownership Effect: A Review of the Evidence
The report is a rigorous study of the available international evidence into how companies with significant employee ownership perform, on a range of key business indicators.