The most successful ESOP companies have one thing in common. Their employees are not just motivated and engaged, they are actively engaged in structured opportunities to identify problems and generate new ideas. Open doors are not enough; you need a system that not only makes this possible but makes it part of people’s jobs. This … Read More
Series of videos about employee ownership produced by the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership. The Millionaire Grocery Clerk At the grocery chain WinCo Foods, grocery clerks become millionaires. How? WinCo is employee owned through an ESOP. ESOPs are a win win win win – businesses get significant tax breaks, owners get paid full fair market … Read More
Research linking broad‐based employee stock ownership (BESO) with firm performance continues to receive considerable attention both in and outside the field of management. Despite the evidence being generally positive regarding the BESO–firm performance relationship, there has been a relative dearth of research providing insights into the circumstances surrounding the effectiveness of BESO. With this research … Read More
Drawing on social identity theory, this research frames a multimediational model that delineates how broad‐based employee stock ownership (BESO) and employee‐perceived involvement practice in tandem yield a productive workforce at the organization level. In our theoretical model, we propose that social cohesion and voluntary turnover are collective attitudinal and behavioral outcomes resulting from the shared … Read More
The first comprehensive analysis of Department of Labor ESOP investigations ever conducted, plus practical advice from experts.
Using novel compensation data from two technology organizations that have been recognized as leaders for their gender equality efforts, we show that even when organizations are taking active steps to reduce gender inequality (and thus, likely have the best of intentions), pay gaps between female and male employees continue to exist. Specifically, we find that … Read More
Work organizations are commonly studied as sites that produce and reproduce inequality. But we know much less about how organizations promote equality. This article examines efforts to broaden access to power, opportunity, and resources in Hotel Bauen, a worker-recuperated business that was converted from a privately-owned company into a worker-run cooperative. Drawing on extensive ethnographic … Read More
In the 20th century, access to capital was the principal source of economic advantage. The business organizations that dominated the developed economies were those that excelled at acquiring large amounts of capital and deploying it productively to produce the steel, concrete, fuel, transportation and other physical materials that drove economic growth in that period. My … Read More
The employee stock-ownership plan, or ESOP, is one of the most powerful legal innovations in recent US history. Since its introduction in the mid-1970s, millions of employees have benefited from being co-owners of the companies where they work. But ESOP formation has slowed in recent years, and it has come with shortcomings. A new generation … Read More
The mainstream economic theory that guides corporations in the US only works if markets are perfectly efficient. This flawed theory has led to corporate decision-making that centers shareholders above all else, including other stakeholders (e.g., workers), long-term business growth, and economic health. This shareholder-first ideology is referred to as “shareholder primacy,” which does not reflect … Read More
While all kinds of businesses become employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) companies, there is a large percentage of engineering firms that have chosen the ESOP structure. Why so?
J. Doug Pruitt talks about the Sundt ESOP program.
This presentation discusses five myths surrounding employee ownership…
Developed in 1989, these slides are placed on CLEO for researchers to use to ascertain some of the perceived motivations behind the types of transactions that were being discussed and closed during this period of ESOP history when many of the big, union-oriented ESOPs were being formed.
This 2019 MIT Sloan case by Zeynep Ton and Katie Bach describes how the executive team at Mud Bay, a privately held pet store chain based in Olympia, Washington, implemented a good jobs strategy by offering better wages and benefits and seeking to recoup the costs by increasing sales growth and lowering other expenses.
Employee-owned businesses tend to outperform their competitors, a growing body of research shows. According to the National Center of Employee Ownership, businesses with employee ownership models grow sales and employment at a faster rate than businesses without such programs. Employee-owned firms also perform better than their counterparts during recessions, per research from Georgetown University. For … Read More
CoopGateway is the world’s largest digital library on cooperatives and mutuals. Created by the Alphonse and Dorimène Desjardins International Institute for Cooperatives of HEC Montréal, CoopGateway aims to promote access, development and sharing of knowledge on cooperatives and mutuals in the digital age.
Employee stock ownership gives employees a voice and therefore may have a major impact on corporate governance. Thus, employee stock ownership may be a powerful mean to protect CEOs from both market for corporate control and dismissal threat. In this paper, we examine the relationship between employee stock ownership and CEO entrenchment. Following the recent … Read More
This book from the National Center for Employee Ownership shows ESOP companies how to communicate the plan to employees as well as customers.
This short book from the National Center for Employee Ownership explains how ESOPs work in a clear and concise manner.
Olivia Nash, an analyst at leading hedge fund BlueShark Capital Management, had just finished listening to the hour-long earnings call for Twitter’s Q4 2017 results. Was Twitter doing well? That depended on which numbers she chose to believe. According to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Twitter had recorded a $108M net loss for 2017. But … Read More
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the public at large perceives employee ownership, and how public perceptions of employee ownership translate into consumer valuation of goods and/or services produced by employee-owned firms. To the extent that consumer interest regarding the governance and ownership structure of firms matters in their purchasing decision, … Read More
Congress designed ESOPs to be the most cost-effective means for both owners and companies to provide for business transition. One of the most difficult problems for owners of closely-held businesses is finding a way to turn their equity in a business into cash for retirement or other purposes. The decision to sell is more than … Read More
The purpose of this paper is to explore employee participation in ownership and control in a modern corporation and its impacts on intra-organizational social capital and workplace dynamics.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at the effect of profit sharing (PS) on the ability of the firm to take care of the environment. Design/methodology/approach In a large cross-section of French firms, the authors find strong associations between PS and various innovations with environmental benefits. With cross-sectional data from the Community … Read More