Vision, Mission, Credo
This note contains examples of mission and vision statements from a number of employee-owned companies, including Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Whole Foods, King Arthur Flour, and more.
The ABCs of ESOPs: Employee Stock Ownership Plans Are Making Ownership Succession a Success
An increasing number of engineering firms are adopting ESOPs because of their many benefits. “We’re seeing a resurgence in them,” says Matheson, managing director of Matheson Financial Advisors in Falls Church, Va. “There’s a growing trend.”
Executive and Broad-Based Stock Options: Evidence from U.S. Panel Data
This paper examines the productivity effect of the adoption of executive and broad-based stock options. The findings include a positive impact on productivity after the introduction of both executive and broad-based stock options.
Broad-Based Employee Stock Options in the U.S.: Company Performance and Characteristics
This paper analyses data on 490 companies with broad-based stock option plans, matched to data from Compustat in order to compare their characteristics and performance to that of other public companies.
Broad-Based Stock Options: Before and After the Market Downturn
We examine labor productivity in small, medium, and large firms that broadly distribute stock options under starkly different market conditions – during the bull (1995-1997) and bear (2000-2002) stock markets. We find greater labor output in both upward and downward markets in all firm size categories, with the exception of small firms in a declining market, where the productivity is also greater, but the statistical significance of the result is weak.
Conscious Growth: Why South Mountain Co. Pursues Deliberate Rather Than Maximum Growth
Is it true that small businesses are just big businesses that haven’t succeeded yet? John Abrams’ company pursues conscious growth not maximum growth.
Davey Tree Stands Tall with Employee Ownership
Over 25 years, The Davey Tree Expert Company’s employee owners built a good small company into one of the premier companies in its industry, with an entrepreneurial zest for new products and acquisitions. The company’s development would have pleased its inventive founder and provably surprised the family members who sold it to hesitant employees in 1979.
Ohio’s Employee-Owned Network: Helping Employee-Owned Companies to Help Themselves?
Can a support organization enhance the development and performance of an employee-owned sector in a market economy? That is the question this paper will address.
Does Employee Ownership Enhance Firm Survival?
Research on employee ownership has focused on questions of productivity, profitability, and employee attitudes and behavior, while there has been little attention to the most basic measure of performance: survival of the company. This study uses data on all U.S. public companies as of 1988, following them through 2001 to examine how employee ownership is related to survival.
SRC Holdings: The ‘Open Book’ Management Culture
The case examines how Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation Holdings (SRC), a key player in the engine and parts remanufacturing market in the US, turned itself around by implementing the ‘Open Book Management’ (OBM) philosophy.
Employee Governance and the Ownership of the Firm
By law, shareholders have an exclusive right to make certain corporate decisions, and this arrangement is generally justified by the shareholder’s role as the owner of the firm. However, many thoughtful observers hold that such a privileged position for shareholders is morally objectionable, in part because it neglects the important role played by employees.
Third-Sector Development: Making Up for the Market
Nonprofit corporations, cooperatives, and credit unions constitute an alternative avenue of hope and action for communities that have come up short in the normal operation of the market economy. These organizations comprise the third sector, which accounts for approximately 10 percent of U.S. economic activity.
Your New Core Strategy: Employee Retention
The Baby Boom is de-booming and soon there will be many more jobs than people available to fill them. The message: Keep your workers happy today.
The United Airline Bankruptcy and the Future of Employee Ownership
UAL suffered from particular design flaws in its stock ownership plan and, more seriously, the absence of complementary institutions focused on the distinctive problems of employee-owned firms.
An Assessment of Employee Ownership in the United States With Implications for the EU
There is a significant gap in the incidence and development of employee ownership between the European Union (EU) and the US when both sectors are examined.
Sally Jameson: Valuing Stock Options in a Compensation Package
Details a thinly disguised situation faced by a recent Harvard MBA graduate who was forced by a prospective employer to place a dollar value on a grant of stock options.
Labor Markets and Firm Benefit Policies in Japan and the United States
This paper presents finding from our most recent research on the transformation of participatory employment practices of Japanese firms in the 1990s, during which the Japanese economy slowed down considerably. The operation appears to be of particular public policy interest for many countries considering participatory employment practices as a way to improve their productivity performance and thus competitiveness.
Molded Dimensions, Inc.
Mike Katz, an MBA with several years of manufacturing management experience, talks about purchasing Molded Dimensions, Inc. (MDI), a Wisconsin-based plastics manufacturer, with his wife Linda, who also has a manufacturing background.
Split Personality: an ESOP is a Retirement Plan. No, It’s an Ownership Investment. Wait—It’s Neither One – Benefits
In the wake of the spectacular bankruptcies of Enron, United Airlines, and Polaroid, employee stock ownership plans have come under intense media scrutiny during the past year. The staggering losses of employees’ retirement savings have prompted pundits to predict the demise of ESOPs, and politicians to call for regulatory overhaul.
Jet Rubber: Ten Years of ESOP Success
The fifty employee owners of Jet Rubber Company, a manufacturer of custom molded goods and rubber-to-metal parts founded in 1955, celebrated the 10th anniversary of their ESOP in March 2003.
Employee Stock Options at Microsoft Corporation
Students prepare an analysis of Microsoft Corporation’s financial statements and footnotes to understand the impact of its use of stock options.
Taking Stock of Equity Compensation
This article describes several forms of stock purchase plans in Canada and examines participation using the Workplace and Employee Survey. Some U.S. statistics are presented as well.
Governing the Firm: Workers’ Control in Theory and Practice
Many explanations for the rarity of workers’ control have been offered, but there have been few attempts to assess these hypotheses in a systematic way. This book draws upon economic theory, statistical evidence, and case studies to frame an explanation.
Are We Out of Options?
They were the currency of the American dream. Now they are worthless paper — a symbol of CEO greed. What went wrong with stock options? Where do companies go from here? Our only option: Visit one of the world’s leading authorities on employee ownership.
In the Company of Owners: The Truth About Stock Options and Why Every Employee Should Have Them
The string of business scandals that recently engulfed America painted a picture of corporate chieftains lining their pockets by cutting corners, cooking the books, and duping gullible investors. In doing so, greedy CEOs have hijacked what could be one of the most important business innovations in decades: stock options for all employees.