Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the historical background for broad-based ownership in the USA, the development of forms of employee ownership and profit sharing in the USA, the research literature on employee ownership and profit sharing and related employee participation, the development of policy and options for new policies. Design/methodology/approach It … Read More
Stakeholder capitalism seeks to benefit multiple stakeholders, rather than primarily shareholders. Two increasingly popular forms are the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and the benefit corporation. But what happens when a company combines these structures? While the benefit corporation’s expanded stakeholder mandate may appear to come at the expense of employee-owner wealth and the potential … Read More
Values represent guidelines for behavior and are important determinants of organizational performance. In addition, employee-owned enterprises (EOEs) tend to outperform traditional organizations. Thus, identifying the core values that underlie successful EOEs should provide insights for improved firm performance. Based on an exploratory comparative analysis of eight high-performing, employee-owned companies, a common set of values that … Read More
Course Description: Techniques of Equity Compensation is a skills-based 2 unit elective course designed to provide students a comprehensive understanding of equity as a compensation vehicle.
Do firms with employee ownership (EO) programs exhibit greater employment stability in the face of economic downturns? In particular, are firms with EO programs less likely to lay off workers during negative shocks? In this article, we examine the relationship between EO programs and employment stability in the United States using longitudinal Form 5500‐CompuStat matched … Read More
With a growing prominence of sophisticated econometric research in a much-expanded field of New Economics of Participation (NEP), it is of particular value to learn about real-world examples of participatory and labor-managed firms in the advanced market economies through extensive case studies. In this volume of Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms, … Read More
Immigrants are increasingly forming worker cooperatives, and the recent Denver taxi driver union-cooperative is one of the largest taxi cooperatives in the country. Current research on the labor empowerment consequences of these emerging immigrant cooperatives is sparse.
The employee benefits of employee ownership are not fully studied. This case contributes to understanding how employee ownership may reduce gender and racial wealth gaps, build family well-being, and become a model for structuring opportunity for those traditionally left out of the economic mainstream.
This case study provides an in-depth look at a company’s board of directors’ composition-related decision-making in the context of broad-based participatory processes and the desire to maintain a profitable and fully employee-owned and governed enterprise.
This case illustrates the rationale for adopting employee ownership, and difficulties in implementing employee empowerment beyond investment. In the beginning it focuses on why Jerry Pritchett, one of the co-founders of Pritchett Controls, decided to convert it to an employee-owned company. In the body of the case, it details the efforts of the company to … Read More
A review of the literature found that companies that practiced a progressive set of HRPP and made decisions based on democratic principles are rare. Thus, knowledge of such a company should be valuable.
Whereas prior studies have used across-industry data to find that employee-owned firms are more likely to survive recessions than others, what such firms do differently was unclear. A literature review failed to reveal a prior study that looked at the internal practices that may cause this to happen.
This report explores access to equity compensation and capital shares in the tech sector, which merits special attention for the following two reasons. First, the tech industry is heavily supported by the federal government. Second, outside industries often emulate the innovative culture and practices of the technology sector.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the additive and differential effects of short-term-oriented group incentives (STOGIs) and long-term-oriented group incentives (LTOGIs) on psychological ownership and organizational commitment. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzed data from 17,255 US employees in the 2005 data set of the National Bureau of Economic Research Shared Capitalism Research. Findings … Read More
This qualitative research project focuses on a compare and contrast between acquisitions by ESOP and Non-ESOP organizations from a consultant’s perspective to obtain a third party viewpoint. Also discussed is a review of the academic literature on Mergers and Acquisitions, the reasons for failures, and possible solutions for successful acquisitions. An ESOP is an Employee … Read More
Transitioning your small business to employee ownership can have positive impacts on employee engagement, productivity, and retention; anchor a lasting legacy for your efforts building the business; and offer a financially rewarding exit path that can be supported by experienced professional assistance. Small business owners throughout the United States are increasingly seeing employees as highly … Read More
The primary aim of this course is to provide an understanding of how organizational systems and individuals interact. In specific, there is a focus on employee ownership structures and business models that contribute to shared prosperity because they are more effective than alternative models.
Businesses interested in transitioning into employee ownership are often presented with a structural dilemma: convert into an ESOP or a cooperative? Go for the democratic worker control and participation of a cooperative, or the tax benefits of an ESOP? In this article the author describes how he helped a company, Sun Light & Power, combine … Read More
Why a low-cost program to educate employees about company ownership could produce huge financial benefits for the country.
This two-page Business Action Guide describes the nation’s largest worker owned cooperative, Cooperative Home Care Associates, and its approach to effective onboarding and mentorship.
This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which … Read More
The benefits of employee ownership as a strategy for achieving broad-based prosperity are well documented—but the growing field of impact investing has yet to fully recognize the key opportunity employee ownership presents for tackling economic inequality. In this Fifty by Fifty research brief, Mary Ann Beyster explores the existing landscape of employee ownership opportunities for … Read More
The National Center for Employee Ownership has released results from the first phase of an ongoing research project that compares the economic well-being of employee-owners early in their careers with that of other young workers.
In 2009, United Steelworkers (USW) and Mondragon signed an agreement to promote union co-ops: firms that combine democratic worker ownership and union membership. Eleven U.S. initiatives now seek to implement the USW-Mondragon union co-op model, prompting a debate about whether unions and worker cooperatives are stronger together. This article draws on a case study of … Read More
We use an experiment to evaluate the effects of participatory management on firm performance. Participants are randomly assigned roles as managers or workers in firms that generate output via real effort. To identify the causal effect of participation on effort, workers are exogenously assigned to one of the two treatments: one in which the manager … Read More