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.
The Great Game of Business: the Only Sensible Way to Run a Company
This book that has, since 1992, become the primer for open-book management, a new method based on the concept of democracy, the spirit of sports, and the reality of numbers.
Empowerment or Else
Nine years ago, the author bought a small manufacturing company with marginal profits, poor union relations, nit-picking work rules, and high labor costs. After a year of bickering, Frey decided he wanted to implement profit sharing.
The Effects of Employee Ownership on Employee Attitudes – An Integrated Causal Model and Path-Analysis
Research on employee-owned organizations to date has utilized alternative theoretical perspectives and has examined varying attitudinal outcomes. This study reviews previous research and attempts to integrate the findings into a causal model that combines the results of prior studies. The resulting causal model was tested empirically with a sample (N = 181) of employees from a firm that adopted an employee ownership programme.
Employee Ownership: A Conceptual Model of Process and Effects
A model is developed that explicates one process through which employee ownership operates, leading to a set of social-psychological and behavioral effects.
Archive of the Owners at Work Newsletter
Find a complete archive of the Owners At Work newsletter from the Ohio Center for Employee Ownership at Kent State University (1989-2019).
Democracy and Economic Power: Extending the ESOP Revolution
Why do the rich get richer and the poor stay poor? How can we privatize publicly owned capital facilities so that employees and users own the stock? How can unions win ‘more’ for their members without rendering American employees uncompetitive? What steps can the government take to make every American economically independent? ‘Democracy and Economic Power’ aims to answer these questions and many more like them.
Employee Ownership, Work Attitudes, and Power Relationships
Relationships of employee equity in the company with work attitudes, information, and desired influence were examined in a prosperous firm converted to employee ownership by its management.
Lincoln Electric Co.
This case covers the strategy and management practices of the world’s largest manufacturer of welding equipment. Discusses the compensation system and company culture, and the leadership style of management.
Job Attitudes and Organizational Performance Under Employee Ownership
This paper assesses the apparent effects on job attitudes and organizational performance of recent conversions to employee ownership at three firms.
Desires for and Patterns of Worker Participation in Decision Making After Conversion to Employee Ownership
The article discusses patterns of and desires for employee participation in management and decision making after an organization has converted to employee ownership. The author notes a number of reasons why an increased level of employee participation in decision making is significant.
Workplace Democratization: Its Internal Dynamics
What leads to successful workplace democracy — over the long-term? To answer that question, the author examined over 50 cases, in 15 different countries, covering a century of experience. The companies ranged from completely worker-owned and -controlled firms on the one hand, to partial but significant participation by employees in the management of privately-owned, community-owned, … Read More