For owners of closely held businesses, choosing how to sell their company can be one of the most important decisions they will ever make. Most pursue familiar exit paths, such as a private equity buyout or a transfer to family members. But a small number will choose a different route: selling the business to their own … Read More
Winner of the NYC Big Book Award in Business-Entrepreneurship & Small Business and silver winner of the Nonfiction Book Awards, this acclaimed handbook shows you how to transition leadership, implement shared ownership, and preserve your organization’s core values—setting the stage for your business to thrive for generations to come. This visionary but practical guide offers … Read More
Employee shareholding fosters stronger alignment between employees and companies, promoting collaboration, accountability, and mutual growth. By giving employees a stake in the company, it enhances decision-making processes, improves corporate governance, and encourages long-term sustainability. When integrated with corporate social responsibility (CSR), employee ownership supports ethical practices and contributes to broader societal goals such as equity … Read More
Cooperatives have spread across virtually all continents. Today, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) recognises over 3 million cooperatives with 1 billion cooperative members or about 12% of the human population and serving many more members of the public, collectively owning trillions in assets. This handbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject and the current … Read More
An engaging and creative story filled with tremendous challenges, and of never giving up even in your twilight years. It’s 1975, and Misty Menard unexpectedly inherits her father’s business in Lake Placid, New York. It never occurred to her that she could wind up as the CEO of a good old-fashioned manufacturing company. After years … Read More
Co-operative enterprises, which are democratically owned and governed by their workers, customers, or suppliers, have long captured the imagination of activists and social scientists alike. In centering economic democracy and a collectivist-democratic logic, and in embodying a “third way” alternative to profit-maximizing corporations and state-owned enterprises, co-operatives offer the promise of a more sustainable and … Read More
In this video, Katrina Kazda (Vice President of Home Care Innovations at The ICA Group) presents on innovations in the home care cooperative sector. She introduces trends related to the care crisis and describes new secondary cooperative initiatives in the sector. Those include Elevate Cooperative and Vivid Life.
As a growing number of employers hire contractors and staffing agencies to build and run their business, some worker rights advocates view staffing cooperatives as a strategy to advance job quality, firm performance, and social outcomes. However, with only a few staffing co-ops and limited past research, a successful strategy requires close study of cooperative … Read More
General discussion questions about employee ownership are presented as well as individual questions on New Belgium Brewing, Namaste Solar and DPR Construction. The Discussion Guide can be used in classroom or other group settings. View “We the Owners” here: https://smlr.rutgers.edu/we-the-owners.
We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream, is a 2012 documentary film about three American businesses that have embraced various forms of employee ownership. This case study offers a closer look at DPR Construction, one of the three featured companies, and was published in January 2025 by the Rutgers Institute for the Study of … Read More
We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream, is a 2012 documentary film about three American businesses that have embraced various forms of employee ownership. This case study offers a closer look at Namaste Solar, one of the three featured companies, and was published in January 2025 by the Rutgers Institute for the Study of … Read More
We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream, is a 2012 documentary film about three American businesses that have embraced various forms of employee ownership. This case study offers a closer look at New Belgium Brewing, one of the three companies featured in the film, published to coincide with the release of the film’s updated … Read More
Question : How Satisfied Are Employees with Their ESOP Plans and What Factors Influence Their Satisfaction? Summary : This research is based on the National ESOP Survey administered in 2019-2021 for ESOP workers, supported by the Employee Ownership Foundation. The survey is a non representative sample of 9 ESOP firms that offers insights on certain … Read More
Questions : What do US workers expect working at an employee-owned (EO) company is like? Are US workers attracted to EO companies? If so, what explains their attraction to EO companies? Summary : In surveys, workers express more positive than negative expectations about working for EO companies and find positive statements, such as “Workers are … Read More
Questions : Are employees more satisfied at employee-owned firms? What factors enhance their satisfaction? Summary : Examining workers’ reviews of their employers on Glassdoor, we compare employee satisfaction between firms in which workers own company shares through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and conventional firms in which they do not. Focusing on workers in … Read More
Union‐cooperative collaborations, which first emerged in the 18th century, have witnessed a resurgence in recent years. Across the world, they have created new jobs, safeguarded worker‐owners facing exploitation, and reinvigorated community and labor movements. By combining cooperatives’ democratizing ideals of self‐reliance and social security with union ideals of empowerment and mass organization, union‐cooperative collaborations hold … Read More
This study attempts to answer questions about the success of companies with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in getting more wealth and income into the hands of employees. By comparing retirement assets and wages in Washington State ESOP companies with those in matched similar non-ESOP firms, the analysis shows that ESOP companies provide significantly higher … Read More
Organizational Models, Cultural Dynamics, and CSR Applications in Employee-Owned Enterprises discusses how employee ownership functions in practice and how it can be leveraged to create not just more profitable but also more ethical and sustainable organizations. In this regard, the relationship between employee ownership and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) stands out as a crucial theme. … Read More
Unions have a complicated history with employee ownership. Prior to the institutionalization of collective bargaining, several nascent U.S. union movements in the late 19th century put worker ownership at the center of their thinking and practice. Since formalized collective bargaining, unions have often resisted participating in employee ownership plans due to concerns about worker financial … Read More
The importance of employee-owned (EO) organizations around the world is increasing. Countries, communities and organizations are realizing that passing profits to workers increases wealth at all levels of society. The benefits, widely known, include personal prosperity, organizational profitability and stability, and a host of economic benefits for communities in which EO companies operate. Selling a … Read More
A central finding of scholarship on employee ownership (EO) is that EO has the strongest impacts on employee outcomes when implemented with other management practices that are typically associated with high-performance work systems (HPWS). However, our explanations for why these complementary practices matter remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we examine whether the extent to which … Read More
In an analysis of data from the 2008-2020 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a large biennial survey of Americans over the age of 50, we find no evidence of ESOP “wage substitution,” even when attempting to account for the possible effects of information we do not know about workers who do and … Read More
Questions: What are the critical success factors (CSFs) for employee ownership and why are they important? The focus of this research is to identify factors that must receive top priority during a high-stakes implementation. Summary: This research identifies the essential CSFs of employee ownership as discovered in 100 carefully curated articles, cases, and books dedicated … Read More
While equity-based employee incentives can positively affect labour productivity in family firms, our understanding of the effect of nonequity-based employee incentives remains limited. Integrating expectancy theory with the socioemotional wealth preservation literature, our study investigates the impact of cash profit sharing (CPS) on family firms’ labour productivity. Specifically, CPS is viewed as a motivational device … Read More
Correspondingly, in the long-standing literature about EOCs, there seems to be a consensus regarding the rather limited viability of democratic organizational forms. Although the explanations, mainly based on microeconomic models, differ in the causal mechanisms explaining EOCs’ short average lifespan. In this paper, we challenge the conventional wisdom about the reasons for the limited viability … Read More