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.
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
Haier Group and MLab organized the 1st International Rendanheyi Model Forum in Qingdao, China, in 2017, to explore the transformation of business models in the current era. Dr. Frank Shipper, the author of numerous case studies on employee owned companies and editor of the book Shared Entrepreneurship: A Path to Engaged Employee Ownership, gave this … 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
Synopsis Carris Reels, a reel-manufacturing company headquartered in Vermont, had long-standing goals of being employee owned and governed. They also had a strong organizational (ownership) culture. The Corporate Steering Committee (CSC), a committee composed of representatives from management and non-management employees, and the board of directors had a decision to make about adding two new … Read More
In this article, Zak reviews his research and that of others to link trust, the production of oxytocin in the brain, and performance. Furthermore, he identifies eight managerial behaviors that lead to building a culture of trust. By doing so the organization lowers stress sick days, and burnout; and increases productivity, engagement, and collaboration among … Read More
Employee ownership is a situation in which employees have an ownership stake in the firm where they work, through holdings of firm stock. It is a channel through which employees share in the profits of the firm and can vote on important firm decisions and otherwise have increased participation in workplace decisions.
This special section of The Sociological Quarterly, edited by Joyce Rothschild includes the following articles: The Logic of a Co-Operative Economy and Democracy 2.0: Recovering the Possibilities for Autonomy, Creativity, Solidarity and Common Purpose by Joyce Rothschild When Freedom is Not an Endless Meeting: A New Look at Efficiency in Consensus-Based Decision-Making by Darcy K. Leach “Plan … Read More
In December, my family finalized a very personal, and we hope impactful, gift titled, J.R. Beyster Papers, to UCSD Library’s Special Collections. After about one year of pre-processing, the collection includes more than 200 boxes of documents covering more than 50 years of hundreds of advanced scientific innovations, small- to billion-dollar business experiments, and discontinued to transformational government program development.
In 1993, Mack Hembree, a successful real estate businessman, was invited to invest in opening a business that he had some commonly held reservations about. The business was a pawn shop… By fostering and aligning employee satisfaction, collaboration, and commitment at every level, Mack has developed an ownership culture that differentiates Gems N’ Loans from its peers and has been instrumental in the company’s success.
In this paper, we first examine whether Huawei has an advantage over ZTE following the strategic restructurings in 2011, and then retest the hypothesis on the positive effect of an ESOP on Huawei’s competitive position…
Profit-sharing plans are one way to address the global issues of income inequality and uneven wealth distribution while increasing employee engagement. One company, the Chinese telecom Huawei, has a successful employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) that demonstrates such incentives can be good for both employees and the business.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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…
When things go wrong at work, as they occasionally do, a common first reaction is to look for the culprit(s). This can lead to punishment which may result in the ‘evildoer(s)’ being severely reprimanded, or even terminated. Unfortunately, not only does the problem often remain unsolved, the organization is left with another challenge of replacing a person or two. There may be a better way that doesn’t result in a lose-lose situation…
In this issue, we close the loop on the triangular governance structure that supports ESOP companies and discuss the role of the ESOP itself as reflected in the duties and functions of the ESOP fiduciary (the trustee).
A tale of entrepreneurship – and a leading holiday decoration company becomes employee owned…
With all the news about company bankruptcies, increased government regulations, higher equipment costs and economic uncertainty, some motor-carrier owners are looking for options…
What is the function of senior management in the governance of ESOP companies? Simply put, the function of management in an ESOP company is the same as in any other company – to manage very well to achieve strategic objectives and to participate in the strategic operation of the company by giving the board feedback on how the strategic plan is being successfully implemented and, more important, where it is failing.
In many ways the persistent top-down command and control theme that supports established leadership thought and practice prevents organizations from fully tapping into their human resources, in turn limiting their flexibility to meet the challenges of increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive environments. Shared Entrepreneurship replaces the top-down approaches of the past with a new framework that draws strengths and innovation from collaboration and sharing.
In 1983, Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne were all recent college graduates and working for a food co-op warehouse in the Boston area. They began to question the system: What if food could be traded in a way that is honest and fair, a way that empowers both farmers and consumers? What if … Read More
The Wawa associates have an ESOP which plays a key role in Wawa’s culture of ownership. This case explores the role of incentives and levers of control to create a successful retail chain.