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
Carris Companies’ Long and Winding Road to Employee Ownership and Values Based Governance
A rapidly expanding entrepreneurial company, the Carris firm is—by its owner’s design—gradually becoming an employee-owned and-directed organization…
Scot Forge: Employee Owners Create a Culture Committed to Quality and Customer Service
Teamwork—a sense of shared responsibility for success—percolates throughout Scot Forge, the largest open die shop in North America. That means hard work, the willingness to pitch in where help is needed and to build a non-traditional organizational culture…
Lucent Technologies
Lucent was created in 1994 as part of AT&T’s tri-vestiture. This case focuses on the dilemma faced by a new company that inherited a labor-management consultation structure developed by AT&T, a structure that has broken down in many respects, and that does not seem adequate to the challenges of the new company in a new and highly competitive market…
United Airlines
In 1994 United Airlines became the largest employee majority-owned enterprise in the United States, with various groups of employees – most represented by unions – having purchased 55% of its stock in exchange for various concessions. The employees accepted pay cuts and made other concessions, but were also granted representation on the company’s board of directors…[newline]
The Open-Book Experience: Lessons From Over 100 Companies Who Successfully Transformed Themselves
Over the last decade companies have struggled to balance the human dimension of business with the need to be aggressive, competitive, and profitable.
Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success
Southwest Airlines has created a culture where employees are treated as the company’s number one asset.
Carris Corporation: Incentive Plan Program
For several years, William H. (Bill) Carris (President and CEO) looked for ways to bring employees into the business. From the beginning Michael (Mike) Curran (Vice-President and COO) had been not in favor of implementing short-term incentives at that time. But having worked with Bill for 20 years, Mike knew when Bill’s mind was set on proceeding…
Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution
Open-book management is not so much a technique as a way of thinking, a process that actively involves employees in the financial life of the company.