Structuring the ESOP
In this video a group of professional advisors discuss how employee owned companies with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) are structured.
An Introduction to Lean Co-op
This free online course from Start.coop is for entrepreneurs building cooperatively owned businesses. Modules include: Lean Co-op: The Basics Defining the Problem Designing the Solution Designing Your Business Model Designing Your Ownership Model Next Steps
Worker-Owner Workbook: A Guide to Embracing the Worker-Owner Culture
The Worker-Owner Workbook can help teams develop cooperative businesses and worker-ownership culture. The book teaches the nuts and bolts of running a co-op business, from business financials to conflict management to team building. It also contains essential information about the co-op movement, labor movement, and the Mondragon cooperative network of Spain. The Worker-Owner Workbook is … Read More
Reimagining Capitalism
Free market capitalism is one of the great achievements of humankind, bringing prosperity and economic freedom to billions of people and contributing to a flowering of individual freedom and possibility that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors. Today, however, increasing global crises are posing the greatest threat this economic system has faced. Growing income … Read More
Inter-Collegiate Seminar on Teaching Inclusive Capitalism
This two day seminar will examine a new form of Inclusive Capitalism founded on a broader distribution of capital acquisition and fuller employment. This two-day virtual event brought together professors of economics and other disciplines from numerous universities to discuss the creation of a teaching and research agenda centered around Inclusive Capitalism.
Shifting Power, Meeting the Moment: Worker Ownership as a Strategy Tool for the Labor Movement
This primer focuses on one set of tools the labor movement can utilize to build power, expand wealth, and deepen member engagement in the years ahead: worker ownership. It explores: How Unions and Worker Ownership Work Together How Worker Ownership Can Build Power for Workers The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Overcoming Challenges Looking … Read More
Understanding the Opportunities for Employee Ownership Among Minority Veteran-Owned Businesses
The United States business sector is dominated by small businesses that create new jobs at a rate considered faster than that of their larger competitors. Remarkably, military veterans own nearly 13 percent of small businesses. However, only eight percent of all veteran-owned firms are minority owned. The low percentage of minority-owned veteran businesses is perplexing … Read More
A Social Enterprise’s Hybridising Journey to Reconcile Goals and Structure with Identity
This study highlights how a mismatch between an organisation’s goals and its legal form and structure can develop over time, and how a hybrid model may present a solution. This longitudinal qualitative study details the hybridising process by which a traditional for-profit company transformed into an employee-owned benefit corporation: the company implemented ownership and control … Read More
Introduction to ESOPs
What is an ESOP and how do business owners decide to transition ownership of their business, and often their life’s work, to their employees? Most business owners know that there are three options when planning for retirement. One, they can sell their business. Two they can, pass the business to a member of their family. … Read More
Harpoon Brewery’s ESOP Story
Hear the story about how one of the first craft breweries in the nation became one of the most successful employee owned breweries in the world. Most business owners know that there are three options when planning for retirement. One, they can sell their business. Two they can, pass the business to a member of … Read More
Mini-Case Study: National Van Lines
This mini-case study examines employee share ownership at National Van Lines, where an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) provided a family-run business a succession plan that ensured the continuation of the company and protected employee jobs. Just one-third of family businesses successfully transition from the first to the second generation of ownership and only 12% … Read More
Mini-Case Study: ComSonics, Inc.
This mini-case study examines ComSonics, which first adopted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1975, introducing its culture and its unusual Employee Advisory Committee.
Company Profile: Max Auto Supply
At Max Auto Supply Co., a Toledo-based chain of 113 automotive repair stores, CEO Randy Katz’s main motivation for adopting an ESOP was “to cash out family owners and avoid estate tax.” It also “felt like the right thing to do” for the company’s employees, most of whom are mechanics and technicians.
Company Profile: S&C Electric Company
This mini-case study examines S&C Electric Company, the storied Chicago-based employee-owned company that was founded in 1911. The mini-case study introduces the company’s history and describes how employee ownership preserved the company and its jobs during a key generational transition.
Cooperative Enterprise at Scale: Comparative Capitalisms and the Political Economy of Ownership
Under what conditions do cooperatively owned enterprises scale to stand alongside investor-owned firms? This article measures and attempts to explain large cooperatives’ variable prevalence across high-income capitalist democracies. Controlling for other known social, economic and geographic factors, statistical models confirm that state-mediated institutional arrangements, as operationalized through two comparative capitalism frameworks (Varieties of Capitalism and … Read More
Turning Employees Into Owners: Rebuilding the American Dream
Employee ownership is a big, bold idea, a market tested concept that is capable of transforming the American economy and rebuilding the American dream. This white paper includes policy proposals for turning more workers into owners.
Anne-Claire Broughton Presentation on Employee Ownership for Speakers Bureau
In this presentation to a business school class, Anne-Claire Broughton, Founder of the North Carolina Employee Ownership Center and Broughton Consulting, presents about employee ownership and pay fairness to Dr. Lynn Bowes-Sperry’s Business Ethics Course. Dr. Bowes-Sperry is Associate Professor of Management & Jack and Susan Acosta Endowed Chair at the California State East Bay … Read More
“Here, You Earn It”: Employee Ownership at Parksite, Inc.
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
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.
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
Employee Ownership: Structuring Opportunities for Racial Wealth Building and Family Well-Being
Policies and practices of the 19th and 20th centuries have had a lasting impact into this century. This is most evident when examining racialized wealth inequality between Black and White families. This study of low-income employee owners examines the following questions: (1) Does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap? (2) How does employee ownership … Read More
A Union Toolkit for Cooperative Solutions
Labor unions and worker-owned businesses share the objectives of generating better jobs and giving workers control over their workplaces. The scaling of worker ownership paired with unionization offers pathways to expanded worker power and wealth-building for working people. The purpose of this paper is to show strategies used by labor unions to support the creation … Read More
Employee Ownership and Wealth Inequality: A Path to Reducing Wealth Concentration
This paper examines the impact of an economy-wide shift to broad-based employee ownership on wealth concentration in the United States. Relying on government data, we show that if all private firms became 30% employee-owned, the wealth distribution would be profoundly altered. Those currently in the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution would see substantial gains, … Read More
Case Study: Isthmus Engineering
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
Platform Cooperativism Consortium
Platform cooperatives make possible a more democratic digital economy. They offer an alternative to extractive “platform capitalism,” one based on cooperative principles such as democratic ownership and governance.