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 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 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…
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed.
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.
This book that has, since 1992, become the primer for open-book management, a new method based on the concept of democracy, the spirit of sports, and the reality of numbers.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
In global competition, where investment increasingly determines a company’s capacity to upgrade and innovate, the U.S. system does not measure up.
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.
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.
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.
This note provides background information on leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Trusts (ESOTs) and Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs).
A model is developed that explicates one process through which employee ownership operates, leading to a set of social-psychological and behavioral effects.
This Video Collection presented by the Foundation for Enterprise Development with the Employee Ownership Foundation and Aspen Institute contains videos from well-respected professors, students and business owners who speak about ways to use employee ownership as a resourceful business tool. They discuss the culture, participation and practices of employee ownership, as well as the facts and statistics of ESOP companies in the world today.
Find a complete archive of the Owners At Work newsletter from the Ohio Center for Employee Ownership at Kent State University (1989-2019).
This paper explores employee ownership as a financial investment rather than a mechanism of control. Viewed from such a perspective, relations among employee ownership, satisfaction, and desired influence are more complex than supposed.