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.
Employee ownership is often used not only as a reward management tool but also as an entrenchment mechanism. The literature suggests that good managers use employee ownership as a reward management tool, whereas bad managers implement it for entrenchment, thus suggesting the existence of an equilibrium level of employee ownership. The contributions of this paper … Read More
This book is a guide to implementing principles and practices developed and used by SAIC to drive exponential growth, global expansion, and diversification across science and technology customers and markets…
Most people know either first-hand or through someone close to them what it feels like to not be valued, to not have a say, to not have control, or to be demotivated at work. A feel-good movie about three companies – New Belgium Brewery, Namasté Solar, and DPR Construction – that strive for the opposite is a welcome relief.
In this 20-minute radio interview, Martin Staubus, executive director, Beyster Institute at the Rady School of Management is interviewed by host, Bill Black on ExitCoachRadio.com.
This case describes the challenges faced by the president of an engineering and environmental services consulting firm (Terra Nova Consulting) as it seeks to address deep internal cultural divisions…
This report provides an update on progress of the 2012 Nuttall Review, including recommendations measured against the commitments made in the U.K. government response to the review. Progress has been made against all 28 of the Nuttall Review Recommendations and in over half of the recommendations progress has been assessed as having been significant. Work … Read More
Inc. Magazine’s “coolest small company in America,” Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB), is an exemplar positive organization known for its culture and award-winning food. This case covers the ZCoB’s decision in 2013 to migrate toward broad-based employee ownership and the iterative, inclusive process by which Zingerman’s Partners Group researched and crafted a new ownership design … Read More
Trust in all organizations is a key to cultural cohesiveness and teamwork…
A new study of business practices reveals powerful ways to create strategic and financial gains. Lower-wage workers, when supported by effective policies, boost productivity, quality, innovation, and revenues from new markets…
We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream is a documentary from the Foundation for Enterprise Development that follows three companies of different sizes in different industries and regions (New Belgium Brewing, Namaste Solar, and DPR Construction) that use employee ownership in diverse ways (an ESOP, a worker cooperative, and a phantom stock plan respectively). … Read More
Why is Southwest so uniquely able to succeed where others can’t? The thing that makes Southwest employees a powerful force for success is that they are autonomous workers working toward a common goal…
Cecil Ursprung, the former CEO of Reflexite Corporation, once described his ideal organizational culture as being a permanent ‘state of mild dissatisfaction.’ You may not agree with the word ‘dissatisfaction,’ but I expect you would agree that innovation flourishes when employee owners are constantly seeking ways to improve the company and that happens when employees are not satisfied with the status quo. Creative energy flows when people refuse to walk away from situations that are ‘good enough.”
This review took evidence from a wide range of sources, covering, in particular, employee owned companies, sector representatives, professional advisers and employer and employee groups. The broad categories of obstacles to employee ownership were soon identified, and were continually reinforced as this review proceeded. They fall into the following three categories: a lack of awareness … Read More
Dini Partners, Inc. became an S-Corporation as of Jan. 1, 2012. ‘It was clearly a way to define an ownership transition. The ESOP provided a path to an orderly transition of ownership. Also, as some of our senior members of the staff transition into retirement, we needed a vehicle to incentivize the younger, talented professionals to have a long-term stake in the firm.’
It is time to make the case that employee ownership is a solution to a lot of what is wrong with our country, and we need to continue to promote the concept until we have 30,000 or 40,000 employee-owned companies rather than the static 10,000 we have had for the last decade or more. If we can do that, we will have put a large part of the country on a much stronger footing, and moved toward solving some fundamental economic and social problems…
Integrating art, business and education, this documentary film captures inspiring stories of employees and founders from three companies, each structured with distinct forms of broad-based employee ownership, who share an insider’s view of shared wealth and responsibility, high involvement culture, and their approaches and challenges in creating opportunity and prosperity through ownership.
Beyster Institute Senior Consultant Martin Staubus is teaching a course entitled ‘Management 269: Creating a High-Performing Workplace.’ In this interview, Professor Staubus describes the course’s five themes.
Outrage over pay differentials between company workers and directors is making political waves in Britain. One solution? Employee ownership.