In 1993, Mack Hembree, a successful real estate businessman, was invited to invest in opening a business that he had some commonly held reservations about. The business was a pawn shop… By fostering and aligning employee satisfaction, collaboration, and commitment at every level, Mack has developed an ownership culture that differentiates Gems N’ Loans from its peers and has been instrumental in the company’s success.
When structured and maintained properly, the 100 percent ESOP-owned S Corporation can be a powerful force of employee ownership…
This course is presented from the perspective of the entrepreneur and employee owner. The seven week course will cover the critical steps of equity and employee ownership; founding your own company or joining a start–up, successfully navigating funding rounds, deploying your equity to incentivize employees and encourage long–term growth, or negotiating through an exit.
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…
To survive, Atlas changed from an external to an internal growth strategy. The smoothness of the transition could at least be partially attributed to a set of internal strategies that were unusual for a commodity/cost-driven industry. They included democratic governance and employee 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.
In the wake of this cooperative’s recently concluded $4M stock offering, Equal Exchange created a single document that explains all of our unorthodox capital model…
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
This Critical Mass Radio Show discusses why, when and how business owners should choose the ESOP path as the correct succession strategy…
Harrell Remodeling, Inc. (HRI) is the result of a young woman’s belief in the ideas that good fortune comes from hard work; that anything is possible with enough commitment; that listening to and serving the needs of others is the only correct business model and that thoughtful, methodical planning is a good thing – not a handicap.
A tale of entrepreneurship – and a leading holiday decoration company becomes employee owned…
In 2008, W. L. Gore & Associates celebrated its fiftieth year in business. During the first four decades of its existence, Gore became famous for its products and for its use of business teams located in a single facility. To facilitate the development of teams, corporate facilities were kept to 200 associates or fewer. Due … Read More
Herman Miller is widely recognized as the leader in the office furniture industry and has built a reputation for innovation in products and processes since D. J. De Pree became president over 90 years ago. Herman Miller is one of only four companies and the only non-high-technology enterprise named to Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” and “The 100 … Read More
Engineer and philanthropist Mary Ann Beyster discusses free enterprise, broad-based ownership, innovation and the documentary film ‘We the Owners’ with Harold Channer in this two-part video interview.
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.
In order to better understand what inspires employees in the workplace, three entrepreneurs share what motivates them to get in the office everyday and put in those long hours to turn their dreams into reality…
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.
Equal Exchange is a cooperative organization that taps into the full capacities of everyone involved in a socially responsible way. This article describes how it has used the wisdom of its multiple stakeholders to create a collaborative community, to be profitable, and to have significant positive impact on people’s lives and the environment in approximately 20 countries.
Before running off and launching a start-up business, one of the most important things an entrepreneur must think through is how to best handle equity in the company…
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…
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…
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…
Dini Partners, Inc. became an S-Corporation as of Jan. 1, 2012. ‘It was clearly a way to define an ownership transition. The ESOP provided a path to an orderly transition of ownership. Also, as some of our senior members of the staff transition into retirement, we needed a vehicle to incentivize the younger, talented professionals to have a long-term stake in the firm.’
It is time to make the case that employee ownership is a solution to a lot of what is wrong with our country, and we need to continue to promote the concept until we have 30,000 or 40,000 employee-owned companies rather than the static 10,000 we have had for the last decade or more. If we can do that, we will have put a large part of the country on a much stronger footing, and moved toward solving some fundamental economic and social problems…
Designed for undergraduate students, Democratic Enterprise provides an open access, introductory-level analysis of democratic models of enterprise, namely co-operatives and employee-owned businesses.