The Age of Autonomy
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…
Somewhere Between Complacency and Fear
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.”
Sharing Success: The Nuttall Review of Employee Ownership
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
Client Profile: Dini Partners, Inc.
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.’
The 2012 Election Cycle: An Embarrassing Circus, Perhaps, but a Great Opportunity for Employee Ownership, for Sure
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…
We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream Official Trailer
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.
Creating a High-Performing Workplace
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.
How to Level the Compensation Playing Field: Employee Ownership
Outrage over pay differentials between company workers and directors is making political waves in Britain. One solution? Employee ownership.
Starting Over in Lexington: Taking Ownership
The folks at our Lexington, Ky. plant are well on their way to becoming owners of their company, all part of our plan to turn the operation around and make it profitable again.
Employee Ownership and Equity Compensation at ATA Engineering
This PowerPoint presentation is a case study that is part of Class 4 from the Course: Topics in Corporate Governance: Techniques of Equity Compensation. The case study discusses ATA Engineering, Inc., a leading independent company in modal and dynamic testing of aerospace structures in the U.S. Their mission statement is to be the leading provider … Read More
Employee Ownership: A Topic for the Entrepreneurship Curriculum
This Teaching module shows four areas in the entrepreneurship curriculum where teaching about employee ownership can 1) put a needed spotlight on this widespread and useful practice and 2) add conceptual value and rich examples for the course topics being taught…
The Beyster Fellowship Symposium Video Series
The Beyster Fellowship Symposium brings together academic leaders and new scholars involved with evaluating broad-based employee ownership (EO) and entrepreneurism. The first symposium was held July 2009 in La Jolla, CA. Over 40 academics shared their research findings and participated in an MIT Enterprise Forum panel discussion, which was attended by more than 200 people. The following are videos of Symposium presentations highlighting multiple dimensions of the history, development, and process of employee ownership.
The Carris Companies: Doing the Next Right Thing
Presented in this case is the Carris Companies’ movement towards 100% employee shared ownership and governance with an emphasis on and investment in education; focus on ‘quality of life’; economic, educational and social accessibility provided by the company for its employees, many of whom are unskilled at the time of initial employment; encouragement of employee wellness; employee involvement in corporate decision-making and philanthropy; companies’ increased efforts to reduce waste and energy use and the overall positive effects on the companies’ profitability…
Creating the Ownership Edge at Your ESOP Company
Our experience and research over the 30 years that employee ownership has shown two distinctive realities: first, overall, employee ownership gives companies a performance advantage—”the ownership edge.” Second, there is no ready-to-use process to guarantee that a company will achieve the ownership edge. There are, however, six clusters of practices that appear again and again in successful ownership companies. This article describes these six components of ownership management and illustrates the myriad ways in which companies implement them.
ESOP Termination: Phase 1
This report describes the results of the first phase of a research project on the reasons companies terminate employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). It summarizes interviews with company leaders at former ESOP companies and suggests directions for the quantitative research planned for phase 2 of this project.
A Positive Movement Forward: Carris Companies Employee-Governance
This chapter presents William (Bill) H. Carris’s distinctive organizational design for a positive and practical model of 100% employee-governance in the movement toward 100% employee-ownership of the Carris Companies, a manufacturer of wood, plastic, and metal reels in six United States locations and one in Mexico…
Employee Ownership Video Collection Teaching Addendum
The Employee Ownership Video Collection Teaching Addendum presented by the Foundation for Enterprise Development is divided into four sections, Teaching in Entrepreneurship Programs, the History of Broad-Based Ownership, Innovation and High-Tech, and Money and People. This video outline is designed to explore the ways to incorporate employee ownership in your class curriculum, learn about the early beginnings of employee ownership and how it has evolved especially in the high-tech fields, and to discover the culture of participation embraced by employee-owned businesses.
Lincoln Electric
Lincoln Electric (LE) has been sharing leadership and ownership with its employees for over 80 years. It has also become the global market leader in electric arc welding equipment with multiple factories overseas. This case begins by discussing how this has been done. The issue under consideration is if LE should expand into India and … Read More
ESOPs and Earnings Management: An Empirical Note
This study seeks to ascertain the impact of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) on earnings management.
King Arthur Flour
Steve Voigt, the CEO of King Arthur Flour, must determine how the company can continue to grow, whilst preserving its unique culture. In 1996, the company was sold to employees in as ESOP transaction. The following decade saw significant growth, despite declining sales for the industry as a whole. The success could be attributed both … Read More
Carris Companies’ Practice of Employee Governance
Distinguishing the Carris Companies’ transition to 100% employee ownership was its more unusual movement towards 100% employee governance. This paper examines the Carris Companies’ practice of governance and the process used to prepare stakeholder citizens for their changing roles and relationships.
The Carris Companies: Making 100% Employee Governance the Practice—Shifting Stakeholder and Citizen Rights and Responsibilities to the Employees
Following a brief description of the methodology employed within this chapter, background information is provided on the Carris Companies. Changing stakeholder relationships highlighted in the segment on employee ownership provide a foundation for understanding the transitional process within the Carris Companies and, specifically, the practice of governance.
Employee Ownership in Privatization
To successfully privatize an enterprise through employee ownership, the state must be willing to sell, the employees must be interested in buying, the managers must be competent, there must be a market for its products or services, the operation must be competitive, labor-management cooperation must be achievable, and sufficient financing should be available.
Carris Companies Experience: Corporate Values in Practice
Organizational leadership sets the standard for ethical conduct in the workplace. Christianity’s “Golden Rule” was used by William H. (Bill) Carris, owner of the Carris Financial Corporation (CFC), as the central ethical principle in his Long Term Plan (UP), describing the transition to 100% employee-ownership and governance…
Employee Ownership in Enterprises in Africa and Asia
This paper examines wider employee share ownership in developing and newly industrializing countries with particular emphasis on Africa and Asia. The first section reviews the available evidence on the extent of wider employee share ownership. The second identifies the key issues relating to the implementation of wider employee share ownership: the objectives for employee ownership, … Read More