Dell Computer Corporation: Share Repurchase Program
Dell Computer Corp. announced a share repurchase program shortly after a significant stock price drop.
Microsoft’s Vega Project: Developing People and Products
This case describes Microsoft’s human resource philosophies and policies and illustrates how they work in practice to provide the company with a major source of competitive advantage. Discusses employee development, motivation, and retention efforts in one of Microsoft’s product groups.
The Ownership of Enterprise
Henry Hansmann explains why different industries and different national economies exhibit different patterns of ownership forms.
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
An equity research analyst is trying to decide how to analyze Silicon Graphics’ financial performance.
Carris Companies’ Long and Winding Road to Employee Ownership and Values Based Governance
A rapidly expanding entrepreneurial company, the Carris firm is—by its owner’s design—gradually becoming an employee-owned and-directed organization…
Scot Forge: Employee Owners Create a Culture Committed to Quality and Customer Service
Teamwork—a sense of shared responsibility for success—percolates throughout Scot Forge, the largest open die shop in North America. That means hard work, the willingness to pitch in where help is needed and to build a non-traditional organizational culture…
Employee Ownership in Enterprises in Africa and Asia
This paper examines wider employee share ownership in developing and newly industrializing countries with particular emphasis on Africa and Asia. The first section reviews the available evidence on the extent of wider employee share ownership. The second identifies the key issues relating to the implementation of wider employee share ownership: the objectives for employee ownership, … Read More
The Effect of ESOP Adoptions on Corporate Performance: Are There Really Performance Changes?
Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPS) have long been promoted as a motivational tool: employees become profit-minded owners. Latterly, however, more ESOPs are being used as part of a takeover defense: here, the ESOPs main purpose is to put more company stock in friendly hands – the employees – who, like existing management, could suffer layoffs, ect. in a hostile takeover.
Lucent Technologies
Lucent was created in 1994 as part of AT&T’s tri-vestiture. This case focuses on the dilemma faced by a new company that inherited a labor-management consultation structure developed by AT&T, a structure that has broken down in many respects, and that does not seem adequate to the challenges of the new company in a new and highly competitive market…
United Airlines
In 1994 United Airlines became the largest employee majority-owned enterprise in the United States, with various groups of employees – most represented by unions – having purchased 55% of its stock in exchange for various concessions. The employees accepted pay cuts and made other concessions, but were also granted representation on the company’s board of directors…[newline]
Employee Ownership and Unions: Lessons from the Airline Industry
The U.S. airline industry has, in recent years, offered some conspicuous examples of a phenomenon that has now become familiar, both in the U.S. and abroad, among firms that face economic difficulties: the granting to employees of a substantial ownership stake in return for wage and work rule concessions necessary to maintain the firm’s viability.
The Evolution of Management in the Mondragon Cooperatives
The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC), a system of worker cooperatives located in the Basque country of Spain, is still considered to be one of the most significant models of worker ownership and community economic development, in the world.
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, specializing in network systems that link computers and provide Internet communications, was founded in 1990. Employee compensation is closely tied to company and individual performance through stock ownership and profit-sharing, and performance is focused on customer satisfaction. Cisco has grown mainly by acquisition, always trying to stay ahead of the next best technological … Read More
The Open-Book Experience: Lessons From Over 100 Companies Who Successfully Transformed Themselves
Over the last decade companies have struggled to balance the human dimension of business with the need to be aggressive, competitive, and profitable.
Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success
Southwest Airlines has created a culture where employees are treated as the company’s number one asset.
Carris Corporation: Incentive Plan Program
For several years, William H. (Bill) Carris (President and CEO) looked for ways to bring employees into the business. From the beginning Michael (Mike) Curran (Vice-President and COO) had been not in favor of implementing short-term incentives at that time. But having worked with Bill for 20 years, Mike knew when Bill’s mind was set on proceeding…
The Perception and Effects of Share Ownership: Empirical Evidence from Employee Buy Outs
This paper explores the impact of employee ownership on employee attitudes, using additional data obtained from four UK bus companies which had adopted the ESOP form of employee share ownership. After reviewing the recent UK literature, the paper highlights findings from US literature that a ‘sense of ownership’ is an important intervening variable between actual ownership and additudinal change, and that opportunities for participation in decision-making are more important that ownership per se in generating feelings of ownership.
Sealed Air Corp.’s Leveraged Recapitalization (A, B)
Less than a year after Sealed Air embarked on a program to improve manufacturing efficiency and product quality, the company borrowed almost 90% of the market value of its common stock and paid it out as a special dividend to shareholders.
Own It, Grow It, Trade It
How do you share the wealth with your employees without going public? SAIC created an internal stock market that outperforms Wall Street.
Cooperation Works!: How People Are Using Cooperative Action to Rebuild Commuities and Revitalize the Economy
Fifty case studies of new types of cooperatives, from healthcare, camping gear, trailer courts, buffalo, hardware, housing, sports teams, credit, carpet, even manure and beyond highlight the almost limitless ways people are using cooperative action to rebuild community, revitalize their economies and secure their lives.
Employee Ownership as Catalyst of Organizational Change
This article identifies several key factors as mediating links between employee ownership plans and organizational effectiveness: the initiator’s purpose of the employee ownership plan; perceptions of ownership; level of participative decision-making systems; and organizational culture.
The Privatization of Rhone-Poulenc–1993
In mid-1993, representatives of Rhone-Poulenc, a leading nationalized French firm, worked with the French government to plan the imminent privatization of the firm.
Transportation Displays, Incorporated (D): Exiting from a Successful Restructuring
Following a successful corporate turnaround and, more recently, a leveraged recapitalization, management of a highly profitable, fast–growing outdoor advertising company must consider alternative ways to harvest cash flow from the company without jeopardizing the turnaround or incurring significant tax liabilities.
Employee Ownership, Employee Attitudes, and Firm Performance: A Review of the Evidence
Employee ownership in U.S. companies has grown substantially in the past 20 years. This paper reviews and provides some meta-analyses on the accumulated evidence concerning the prevalence, causes, and effects of employee ownership, covering 25 studies of employee attitudes and behaviors, and 27 studies of productivity and profitability (with both cross-sectional and pre/post comparisons).
My Struggle with Wall Street
Many of the most important practices at this company exist in large part because Wall Street and the banks have applied so much pressure. If the financial community had gone easier on us, we might not be where we are today.