Managing for Value: It’s Not Just about the Numbers (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)
The authors argue that properly applied, a VBM program will put your company’s profitability firmly on track.
Nucor Corporation (A, B)
This case examines several strategies advocated by various actors in the Nucor Corporation, a major producer of steel.
The Ohio Employee Ownership Center
The Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC) is a non-profit, university-based program that provides outreach, information, and preliminary technical assistance to Ohio employees and business owners interested in exploring employee ownership.
Employee Governance
This paper reviews the conflicts of interests introduced by employee participation in the governance of a firm and how these can be constructively resolved by introducing a division of power between investors and employees and/or between management and workers.
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.
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
Getting Your Company Ready for an ESOP: The Ownership Culture Perspective
This chapter describes how ESOP companies can align expectations and build a culture of ownership; reprinted from “Selling to an ESOP, Sixth Edition.”
Employee Ownership: An Unstable Form or a Stabilizing Force?
In this paper, we take on a seemingly very simple set of empirical questions that we hope will shed light on whether employee ownership of firms ‘works’…
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…
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…
Employee Buyouts and Industrial Relations under Employee Ownership: A Case Study of Karabuk Steel Mill
This article examines the employee buyout process and industrial relations under employee ownership based on the case study of the Karabuk steel mill.
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]
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
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.
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.
Corporate New Ventures at Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble’s top executives form a small, autonomous, cross-functional Corporate New Ventures team led by a young former brand manager. The team invents a systematic approach to gathering information and producing creative ideas for radically new product categories.
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).
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…
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.
Employee Stock Ownership and Corporate Performance Among Public Companies
This study compares the corporate performance in 1990/91 of two groups of public companies: those in which employees owned more than 5% of the company’s stock, and all others.
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.
Ownership and Control: Rethinking Corporate Governance for the Twenty-First Century
This book points to the need for flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions and cogently summarizes and evaluates the principal proposals for changes in corporate governance.
UAL Corporation
In the largest attempted employee-buyout in history, a large U.S. commercial airline seeks substantial wage concessions from its employees in return for 53% stake in the airline’s common stock and guaranteed seats on the board of directors.