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Welcome to the CLEO Collection of Free Case Studies of employee owned companies. Discover and use these full-text downloadable case studies in your courses and scholarship. Case studies facilitate classroom discussion and enable students to grapple with real-world scenarios.  In addition to the free full-text cases listed below, find links to many more case studies in addition, here.

Do you know of a case study on an employee owned company that should be included in CLEO? Email suggestions to Julie Peters.



HDR – Building a Global Employee Ownership Culture

Lorin Busaan, Simon Pek | August, 2023

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

Friesens Corporation: Supporting the Local Community through Employee Ownership

Lorin Busaan, Simon Pek | May, 2023

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

Milestone Environmental Contracting Inc.: Employee Ownership as a Next Step for a Fast-Growing Environmental Remediation Company

Lorin Busaan, Simon Pek | April, 2023

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

MyPath: Exploring the Intersection of DEI and Employee Ownership

Valerie J. Whitcomb | January, 2023

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

Acadian Companies – The Next 50 Years

Valerie J. Whitcomb | January, 2023

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

AlliedUP: A Worker-Owned Healthcare Staffing Cooperative Transforms Temporary Work

Minsun Ji | December, 2022

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

Sanjay Pinto | December, 2022

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

Golden Steps

Sanjay Pinto | December, 2022

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 Cooperative, LCA

Camille Kerr | December, 2022

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

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Cleveland Clinic

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

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

Five Point Holistic Health

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

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

Five Home Care Cooperatives in Washington State

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

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

PT360: Vermont Physical Therapy Cooperative

Adria Scharf | December, 2022

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

“Here, You Earn It”: Employee Ownership at Parksite, Inc.

Adria Scharf | October, 2021

This case study examines employee share ownership at Parksite, Inc., where the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is paired with a strong company culture and high job quality. For the company’s co-founders, the ESOP provided a solution to a major transition challenge. The company’s long-term employees accumulate considerable stock wealth through the ESOP. Discussion questions … Read More

Case Study: North State Grocery

Adria Scharf | October, 2021

This case study examines employee share ownership at North State Grocery, where the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) solved a transition challenge in a company owned by two siblings. Thanks to the ESOP, long-term employees, including frontline staff such as cashiers and bakery workers, build a larger cushion of retirement savings than is typical in … Read More

Case Study: Central States Manufacturing, Inc.

Adria Scharf | October, 2021

This case study examines employee share ownership at Central States Manufacturing, where the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) shares stunning sums of wealth with employees. Central States designs its ESOP to allow participants to access a portion of their ownership wealth while they are still employed at the company, through hardship and service withdrawals. This … Read More

Case Study: Isthmus Engineering

Margaret Lund | July, 2021

Isthmus Engineering is an example of a highly democratic worker-owned firm operating in an industrial sector that one might not think of as fertile ground for participatory democratic governance—the design and manufacture of highly technical custom automation machinery. From the beginning, membership in the cooperative has been open to any worker, regardless of role or … Read More

Mud Bay’s Good Jobs Journey

Katie Bach, Zeynep Ton | February, 2019

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.

Succession at Berrett-Koehler Publishers: Institutionalizing the “BK Way” and Protecting BK Values for Future Success 

Murray Silverman, Sally Baack | June, 2015

The Berrett-Koehler (BK) case highlights the efforts of a competitively successful, mission-driven, socially responsible publishing company to preserve its values, culture and practices while ensuring continued future success. The case provides an opportunity to cover corporate governance topics such as: ownership structures, shareholder relations, CEO and organizational succession planning, and board roles and responsibilities. 

Using Ownership Incentives in China 

Tamara Carleton | December, 2011

Roy Weber met Cheng Wang, a business consultant and Chinese entrepreneur, at Cheng’s hotel bar in Silicon Valley. Although Roy was slightly familiar with Chinese business practices, he welcomed more advice from a Chinese national. Could Roy transplant Silicon Valley’s model of employee ownership to China, and what would this process entail for a technology startup? 

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) (A, B) 

Moses Lee, William Hall | January, 2011

At the start, Dr. Beyster made the decision that SAIC would be employee owned and that ownership would be based on merit and contribution to the company, not tenure. Using employee ownership as a selling point to prospective hires, Dr. Beyster was able to recruit talented employees and build a successful organizational culture. However, changes made after Dr. Beyster stepped down would have implications for SAIC's company culture...  

Maui Divers of Hawaii 

Ozge Tekin, Shirley J. Daniel | March, 2010

Maui Divers established its employee ownership plan in 1997. Maui Divers store managers/employee owners embrace the business as their own. Although the final decision belongs to the company management team, store managers excel in increasing sales and they continuously come up with business plans in order to make the business better.  

CHART Rehabilitation of Hawaii 

Ozge Tekin, Shirley J. Daniel | March, 2010

Frieda Takaki took a deep breath, filling her senses. She was about to make a very difficult decision. She took off her shoes, placed them next to her desk and started pacing her office barefoot as she was thinking aloud. “I can’t let this business close down,” she whispered. “I have to do something about it.” The answer was now abundantly clear: why wouldn’t the employees buy the business from the owners?