Looking for Mr. GoodTrustee
The purpose of this brief article is to suggest an interview script that reflects a list of areas that an ESOP company should want to understand completely before handing over this extremely important role to an outsider…
Employee Ownership Through Stock Options and SARs: Wikoff Color
This two-page Business Action Guide describes the Wikoff Color’s unique formula for employee ownership.
Innovative Scheduling Practices for Workplace Stability: Cooperative Home Care Associates
This two-page Business Action Guide describes the nation’s largest worker owned cooperative, Cooperative Home Care Associates, and its innovative approach to scheduling.
Why H-E-B’s Texas Supermarket Competitors Should Be Scared
A favorite question of mine for any CEO: What’s the toughest thing about your business? I guarantee you any executive in the supermarket industry will rank among his or her top headaches the hiring and retention of good people, in an industry where service quality increasingly is the mark of differentiation, and worker turnover is … Read More
It’s Your Money and Your Life!: Interview with Martin Staubus
This interview with Martin Staubus discusses employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). As Executive Director of the Beyster Institute at UCSD, Staubus has extensive experience in workplace issues and the challenges and opportunities of implementing ESOPs.
Mitigating Risk to Maximize the Benefits of Employee Ownership
This report has two goals. The first goal is to answer questions about undue risk in order to prevent companies from adopting employee ownership structures that endanger workers and jeopardize the collective benefits of broad-based sharing. The second goal is to help create widespread support for policies that would encourage greater adoption of beneficial employee … Read More
1worker1vote: MONDRAGON in the US
MONDRAGON, the largest cooperative in the world, and the inspiration for several U.S. cooperatives, faces a challenge in 2013 after one of its largest cooperatives votes to leave the group and another goes bankrupt.
The Benefits of an ESOP for Corporate Transition Strategies
Like many ESOPs, the Macfadden Employee Stock Ownership Plan was established as a means of transitioning ownership from the company’s founder to its employees. Just over 12 years later, the Macfadden ESOP now owns 100 percent of the company…
Sustainability in the 21st Century
For the last several years, there has been a constant and very predictable discussion taking place regarding the sustainability of ESOP companies…
Section 1042: A Guide to Floating Rate Notes
Floating rate notes (FRNs) are bonds that have a variable coupon that is pegged to a reference rate, typically LIBOR, plus a fixed spread. There are several variations of FRNs, but this article will focus on those utilized to fulfill IRC Section 1042 requirements.
Capitalism for Everyone: Encouraging Companies to Adopt Employee Ownership Programs and Broad-Based Profit Sharing
When a company does well, so should its workers. American workers have helped the economy grow by becoming more productive. Yet, even as productivity has increased, many middle- and working-class households have experienced stagnant wages and declining household incomes over the past few decades. This means workers currently receive only a small share of the … Read More
Succession at Berrett-Koehler Publishers: Institutionalizing the “BK Way” and Protecting BK Values for Future Success
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.
Atlas Container Corporation: Thinking Outside the Box
To survive, Atlas changed from an external to an internal growth strategy. The smoothness of the transition could at least be partially attributed to a set of internal strategies that were unusual for a commodity/cost-driven industry. They included democratic governance and employee ownership…
Why Are ESOPs Prevalent in Manufacturing and Construction Industries?
Two of the most common industries to have established ESOPs are construction and manufacturing, combining to make up 35 percent of the 1,600 companies represented by the ESOP Association…
ESOP and a New Wave of Local Awareness
By taking the great example of regional ESOP promotion pioneers, engaging the University of California in the effort and working to engage other educational institutions as well as leaders in business and the local employee ownership community, we believe that it will be very possible to build strong regional support for the idea that communities ought to be the most active supporters of employee ownership…
Beyster Startup Toolkit: Sharing Equity Ownership
Ultimately, the success of your venture will be determined not by your efforts alone but by the performance of the cast of people — employees, partners, or associates — that you assemble. So, if there is a strategy that can help you get more out of the people on whom you depend and also boost your organizational horsepower, you owe it to yourself to take a serious look. A policy of sharing equity with employees that is designed and used wisely can be just that strategy.
Employee Ownership and Governance: The Carris Companies Making Change Impacting the Whole
William H. (Bill) Carris set a deliberate purposeful course for the whole system change that he deeply desired for his employees. The Carris transformation, innovative in its own right, provides examples of change from being traditionally owned, managed and governed to having shared ownership, participatory management and shared governance by the whole…
How Equal Exchange Aligns Our Capital with Our Mission
In the wake of this cooperative’s recently concluded $4M stock offering, Equal Exchange created a single document that explains all of our unorthodox capital model…
Can We Do It Ourselves?
Can We Do It Ourselves focuses on economic philosophy with an emphasis on the concept of economic democracy. The film helps viewers understand the difference between a market economy in which consumer demand drives a company’s supply of goods and services, and a capitalist economy in which private owners control production and hold a right to … Read More
Case Studies: Business Conversions to Worker Cooperatives: Insights and Readiness Factors for Owners and Employees
How does a business go about transitioning —“converting”— to a worker-owned cooperative? This report provides illustrations with case studies of businesses that have converted and highlights key lessons from those companies’ experiences. The report categorizes conversions into four types: Type I: Owner sells to existing employees with the intention of remaining with the company; Type … Read More
Critical Mass Radio Show Featuring Keith Molchan and Martin Staubus
This Critical Mass Radio Show discusses why, when and how business owners should choose the ESOP path as the correct succession strategy…
Improbable Schweitzer Engineering ESOP Story: Growth Company That Stayed Put
Peoria, Ill., without Caterpillar (CAT)? Benton Harbor, Mich., without Whirlpool (WHR)? Columbus, Ind., without Cummins Engine (CMI)? One of America’s under-appreciated relationships is the one between smaller cities and bigger companies, an often-happy exchange of quality-of-life for the combination of well-paying and skilled jobs, economic growth and stability, and corporate generosity to support cultural and … Read More
Dependency, Poverty and Employee Ownership
In today’s economy, some employees live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to save for a rainy day, let alone retirement. However, an increasingly utilized business model may yield part of the solution. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are a promising alternative to traditional business models…
Harrell Remodeling ESOP Company Profile
Harrell Remodeling, Inc. (HRI) is the result of a young woman’s belief in the ideas that good fortune comes from hard work; that anything is possible with enough commitment; that listening to and serving the needs of others is the only correct business model and that thoughtful, methodical planning is a good thing – not a handicap.
J. Robert Beyster’s Spirit Lives On
In 1986, Dr. Beyster created the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED) to assist companies and individuals who were interested in furthering the concept of employee ownership, a core principle of Dr. Beyster’s entrepreneurial philosophy…