The Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies
St. Lukes, a rebellious young agency spun out of the once-revolutionary Chiat/Day, practices what it preaches — the gospel of total ethics and common ownership.
McKay Nursery Company (A, B)
McKay Nursery Co., founded in 1897 in Waterloo, WI, had a longstanding history of commitment to employees. The close-knit organization was a pioneer in the agricultural industry of several employee-friendly policies. But in the early 1980s, as McKay’s owners grew older and senior management neared retirement, the next generation of managers feared for the future of the profitable, debt-free company…
Colt Industries
Colt Industries is a conglomerate that is considering undertaking a leveraged recapitalization.
Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution
Open-book management is not so much a technique as a way of thinking, a process that actively involves employees in the financial life of the company.
Why Do Firms Adopt Profit Sharing and Employee Ownership Plans?
Profit-sharing and employee ownership in companies have attracted considerable interest, yet there has been little research on factors predicting the adoption and maintenance of these plans. This study uses new data from a survey of 500 US public companies, and panel data on corporate financial variables, to examine factors predicting the presence and adoption of profit-sharing and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in the 1975–91 period.
Transportation Displays, Incorporated (C): The Case for a Preemptive Restructuring
A company nears the end of a long multiyear turnaround and now must consider how to “cash out” so its management can realize a financial return on investment. The privately held company has several options, including a leveraged ESOP and a leveraged recapitalization.
Connor Formed Metal Products
Connor Formed Metal Products was a small, privately owned manufacturer of custom metal springs and stampings. Since becoming president in 1984, Bob Sloss had implemented many changes to the company’s organizational structure, management control systems, and information systems.
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs): Objectives, Design Options and International Experience
Employee share schemes are becoming more prevalent worldwide. Originally designed as an ownership-broadening technique of finance, the term ‘ESOP’ is now used to describe a wide variety of employee participation strategies covering a diverse array of applications. ESOPs are best known for their adaptability and flexibility across a broad range of economic, political, and cultural circumstances.
Employee participation, ownership, and productivity: A theoretical framework
A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed.
Participation and Productivity: a Comparison of Worker Cooperatives and Conventional Firms in the Plywood Industry
A perennial issue is the study of organizational behavior is the impact on productivity of participation by workers in a firm’s decisionmaking. The question has returned to the foreground is the recent debate over policies to increase U.S. productivity growth.
Work Alienation and Problem Alcohol Behavior
Using a sample of production workers from union, nonunion, producer cooperative, and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) wood products mills in the Northwest, we test the general proposition that work alienation, defined as low job autonomy, low use of capacities, and lack of participation in decision-making in the workplace, is associated with heavy drinking and negative consequences from drinking.
Transportation Displays, Incorporated (A)
William Apfelbaum, president and CEO of Transportation Displays, Inc., must restructure both the company’s method of doing business and its liabilities to keep it from bankruptcy. The value he hopes to receive from the reorganized company will be an important issue in the restructuring negotiations with creditors.
Transportation Displays, Incorporated (B)
Transportation Displays, Inc. has gone through a series of restructurings. This case describes the last few stages, which substantially reduced debt and increased the ownership of management.
Howard Schultz (A, B)
In the late 1980s Howard Schultz led the Starbucks Coffee Co. to explosive growth, transforming a small whole-bean coffee company into a national retail power. Starbucks success hinged on its reputation for quality and personal service…
People Express Airlines: Rise and Decline
This case describes the innovative approach to organizing and managing employees by People Express and describes the company’s eventual demise.
Empowerment or Else
Nine years ago, the author bought a small manufacturing company with marginal profits, poor union relations, nit-picking work rules, and high labor costs. After a year of bickering, Frey decided he wanted to implement profit sharing.
The Effects of Employee Ownership on Employee Attitudes – An Integrated Causal Model and Path-Analysis
Research on employee-owned organizations to date has utilized alternative theoretical perspectives and has examined varying attitudinal outcomes. This study reviews previous research and attempts to integrate the findings into a causal model that combines the results of prior studies. The resulting causal model was tested empirically with a sample (N = 181) of employees from a firm that adopted an employee ownership programme.
The Elusive ESOP–Productivity Link: Evidence from US Firm-Level Data
This paper investigates whether employee participation in ownership or profit-sharing in publicly held firms through an ESOP or profit-sharing plan was positively associated with productivity measures. The sample consists of firms that adopted such plans during 1982 through 1987.
The Scope, Nature, and Effects of Employee Stock Ownership Plans in Japan
Using data for various years, including new data for 1973 through 1984, the scope, nature, determinants, and effects of employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) in Japan are examined.
Rick Surpin (A, B, C)
A long-time community development worker creates hundreds of jobs for low-income women and minorities by forming a for-profit home health care cooperative, Cooperative Home Care Associates…
Workers as Owners: An Empirical Comparison of Intra-firm Inequalities at Employee-owned and Conventional Companies
Based on a sample of three employee-owned and seven conventional companies, this study empirically tests the theoretical claim that employee ownership and management reduces inequality at the firm level. Inequality is broadly defined as the unequal distribution of income, wealth, power, prestige, and privileges, as well as the existence of social boundaries between classes.
Practice Note: Questions and Answers Regarding ESOPs for Family Businesses
Assessing the applicability of employee stock ownership plans for a family firm requires a basic understanding of their characteristics, followed by a careful analysis of the costs and benefits in the specific case. This note provides general information and offers guides for the critical, specific questions an adviser or owner should ask.
Employee Ownership, Attitudes, and Turnover: An Empirical Assessment
Previous research on employee-owned organizations has been limited in time frame and in the outcomes examined, which have been primarily attitudinal measures. This study examined the effects of an employee ownership program on employee attitudes and actual turnover behavior over an extended time period.
The Economic Effects of Profit Sharing in Great Britain
There are a number of ways to have workers’ remuneration linked more readily with firms’ commercial performance. One is to link wages to profits by using cash-based profit sharing (where workers are made cash payments which vary with employer’s profitability). A second is to have workers paid partly in their firms’ own shares. A third, and more extreme alternative, is producer co-operatives where workers participate in profits, ownership and decision-making. In this article we examine both the theoretical and empirical evidence in support of such schemes.
Employee Ownership: A Conceptual Model of Process and Effects
A model is developed that explicates one process through which employee ownership operates, leading to a set of social-psychological and behavioral effects.