This paper, presented at the Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership Research Symposium in 2023 held at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, discusses the current state of employee ownership research and where it needs to go. The paper is written in an informal manner where the authors write in the first person.
This teaching case study explores the dynamics and evolution of employee ownership in HDR, a large multinational professional services firm. Broad-based employee ownership has strong affinities with professional services firms, whose success largely depends on the knowledge and capabilities their employees bring to their work. As HDR grew and expanded internationally, it had to address … Read More
This step-by-step guide explains how to build an employee equity plan with an LLC. Giving employees an ownership stake in your company can help build a foundation for growth. Using different forms of equity, LLCs can attract and retain employees—and ensure they are invested in the company’s success. Learn how different LLC equity types work.
This case examines the decision by private equity firm KKR to grant equity to every employee at portfolio company CHI Overhead Doors upon purchasing the company in 2015. The case explores whether this initiative will create shared value, growing profits through better incentive alignment while creating wealth for low-wage manufacturing workers. While CHI witnessed some … Read More
This research presentation was hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in partnership with the Ford Foundation. The event explored how some companies are seeking to increase low- and moderate-income workers’ wealth through investments in ownership and employee benefits. Focus was on how efforts to improve the wealth of low- and moderate-income workers … Read More
This teaching case study explores the evolution of employee ownership at Friesens Corporation, one of Canada’s leading book printers. Employee ownership has been a cornerstone of Friesens’ ability to navigate economic downturns and systemic changes in the printing industry, while creating wealth for employees and retaining a strong commitment to the local community. Despite a … Read More
This teaching case study explores employee ownership at Milestone Environmental Contracting Inc. Milestone has long seen its employees as crucial to achieving its ambitious vision of becoming the general contractor of choice for governments, consultants, and engineers in an increasingly in-demand field in Canada. Recently, grounded in a desire to ensure that growth is more … Read More
How we structure ownership and work in healthcare matters. As a society, we underpay and under-support—under-care-for—the very workers we rely on to provide health and care services to others. The COVID-19 pandemic briefly spotlighted this fact as health workers braved risks to care for the vulnerable. The worst of that crisis has passed—but the extractive … Read More
Telecare, a mental health provider founded on respect and recovery, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015, and by 2018 it was focused on future growth. Workforce development was a key factor, and the management team had developed a well-researched plan which was authored and supported at the highest levels of the organization. It encompassed a … Read More
Wilson Senior Care enjoyed stability and growth in the skilled nursing industry in South Carolina beginning in 1947 and through to the present day. The company has evolved into an award-winning provider of rehabilitation and nursing services for patients coming from acute care and for the elderly. The ownership-mentality of the employees, stemming from the … Read More
MyPath grew steadily since its inception in 1984 in an industry rife with regulations and oversight. Navigating the healthcare landscape and advocating for its disabled patients became a hallmark of the organization. Through the years, a strong culture emerged thanks in part to employee ownership which contributed to a ‘can-do’ attitude found at all levels … Read More
With fifty successful years behind Acadian Ambulance Service, now known as Acadian Companies, the focus was clearly on the future. The company had a history of steady organic growth and external growth through strategic mergers and acquisitions. The company now was comprised of six successful and profitable divisions, all synergistic but unique in their management … Read More
This case study examines the only physical therapy practice in the country to be structured as a worker cooperative. Founded in 2010 by 12 coworkers who left their previous employer to start their own practice together, PT360 has grown to become the largest independent physical therapy practice in the state of Vermont. It now has … Read More
Can a nonhierarchical organization set its own rules? Can it avoid reproducing hierarchy and exploitation in order to better support its clients and workers? Can it survive, as a consensus-based organization, within the system of capitalism and within institutional settings that expect hierarchy? This case study examines Alliance Collective, an anti-authoritarian therapy collective of practitioners … Read More
Contingent workers make up a large part of today’s healthcare workforce, and the healthcare industry is America’s most contingent worker-dependent industry. While contingent healthcare workers overall earn low pay with few benefits, contingent work burdens fall most heavily on women of color, due to deep race and gender-based inequalities that have long plagued the healthcare … Read More
Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) holds a significant place within the U.S. worker cooperative and long-term care landscape. For decades, it has been the largest worker cooperative in the country by some distance. CHCA workers are also members of the largest union in the country, 1199Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers East (1199SEIU). Through its … Read More
Founded in 2012, Golden Steps is a Brooklyn-based worker cooperative of immigrant women of color, all of whom have roots in Central and South America. Providing services to those who do not qualify for Medicare or need more than what Medicare will pay for, Golden Steps operates in a part of the market where home … Read More
Obran is a cooperatively owned holding company with a related financing arm. It recently acquired a 50-person home health care business based in Los Angeles and the cooperative is under letter of intent (LOI) for a 100-person home health business serving the Bay Area. With this unique model, the cooperative’s leadership seeks to create quality … Read More
The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry’s partnership with Cleveland Clinic is perhaps the best-known example of an “anchor institution” approach to economic development in the United States. The worker-owned business is the primary laundry vendor for the Cleveland Clinic’s entire northeast Ohio area. Their experience to date suggests that it is indeed possible for a health system … Read More
This case study examines Five Point Holistic Health, the Chicago health center organized as a worker cooperative. The center offers acupuncture, psychotherapy, and bodywork treatments and services. From its earliest days, the worker-owners of Five Point have prioritized making its services affordable and accessible to the community. After years of hard work, they have achieved … Read More
No other state has as many individual home care cooperatives in operation as Washington. Although small and limited to date to serving the private pay market, Washington’s home care cooperatives suggest that “another way is possible” for organizing home care provision in the state. The business model they are piloting breaks with dominant, extractive, models … Read More
The purpose of these chapters (Parts 1 and 2) is to show why and how one firm integrated Servant Leadership, among other initiatives, into its growing socially responsible culture, through the eyes of its designing CEO. The firm is a 50-year-old, US nationwide environmental consultancy, which is now 100% employee-owned and a legal “public benefit … Read More
Wages don’t cover the bills. Wealth inequality is growing. Social trust is eroding. There are endless debates about what to do, but one key factor is inexplicably left out: who owns the companies that drive the economy? Ownership matters. Ownership by a few means benefits for a few. But if you spread ownership around, you … Read More
This Kent State University course is motivated by the broad question: what role can workplace democracy and employee ownership play in creating an economy that works for all? Workplace democracy and employee ownership take a multitude of forms and are receiving renewed attention from public officials, the business community, social movement leaders, and academics. Nearly … Read More
Purpose This study investigates whether broad-based employee ownership (BBEO), in isolation and in conjunction with cash profit sharing (CPS), can enhance labor productivity in family firms over nonfamily firms. Design/methodology/approach Hypothesis testing was conducted using cross-sectional time-series regression with a matched sample of 393 family and nonfamily firms listed on the US S&P 500 over … Read More