What if excess wealth derived from business couldn't be privatized? Through the levers of steward-ownership, companies can protect their purpose-oriented long term mission from the maligned incentives of absentee stakeholders.
Steward-ownership is capitalism 2.0
In my previous post, I explained why we need to change incentive structures if we want to build companies that are a force for good in…
Steward Ownership, Sustainability, and Capitalism: Part 1
Steward-ownership
Steward-ownership structures a company's ownership in a way that separates economic rights (related to money) from voting rights (related to decision-making power).[1] Steward-ownership is considered an alternative to shareholder primacy models.[2] Steward-ownership can be implemented using different legal forms depending on the type of company and jurisdiction.[3]
Democratic Ownership Funds: Creating Shared Wealth and Power
Recent decades have seen a rapid and little-discussed transformation in corporate ownership structure, with vital consequences for company behaviour and inequality.
WSJ News Exclusive | Private-Equity Giants Back New Nonprofit Promoting Employee Ownership
More than 60 groups, including banks and pension funds, have also signed on to support Ownership Works, which aims to promote broad-based stock ownership as a means of curbing income inequality.
Unlocking the commons
"The most powerful and interesting media model will remain raising money from members who don't just permit but <em>insist</em> that the product be given away for free."
Think Like a Commoner | A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons
In our age of predatory markets and make-believe democracy, our troubled political institutions have lost sight of real people and practical realities. But if you look to the edges, ordinary people are reinventing governance and provisioning on their own terms. The commons is arising as a serious, practical alternative to the corrupt Market/State.
The corporation—a return to origins?
This paper contributes to contemporary debates in political theory about the power of business corporations by offering a genealogy of the corporation through the lens of a series of historical mutations of the corporate form. Originally, there were two corporate forms, both non-profit: member corporations (today's associations) and property corporations (today's charitable foundations). The contemporary business corporation arguably is a hybrid of both of these original forms, introducing unique commercial features (shares with profit distribution rights that are transferable). These commercial features are largely responsible for the corporation's extractive nature, that is, its tendency to prey on non-shareholder interests. The future of the corporation may well lie in a partial return to the two original non-profit forms. Two corporate forms developed in the nineteenth century can provide the format for such a return: cooperatives (which reinforce the idea of membership) and foundation-owned companies. The cooperative structure is a halfway house between a business corporation and a member corporation (association), and in a parallel fashion, a foundation-owned company is a halfway house between a business corporation and a property corporation (foundation). If we want to reduce corporations’ extractive nature, facilitating the spread of cooperatives and foundation-owned companies seems the way forward.
What's steward ownership? - Purpose
Steward ownership is a proven ownership model that has been in place for many decades – having been implemented by companies like Zeiss (Germany), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Patagonia (USA), Bosch (Germany), Signal (USA), BuurtzorgT (Netherlands), Carlsberg (Denmark) and many others around the world.
What's steward ownership? - Purpose
Steward ownership is a proven ownership model that has been in place for many decades – having been implemented by companies like Zeiss (Germany), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Patagonia (USA), Bosch (Germany), Signal (USA), BuurtzorgT (Netherlands), Carlsberg (Denmark) and many others around the world.
Is open source wealth distribution fair?
These concrete value propositions can convince companies to pay open source maintainers.
Shareholder Democracy Is a Corporate Governance Myth That Won’t Die
In a new article, we challenge one of corporate law’s most persistent narratives: the concept of “shareholder democracy.” With people on opposing sides of recent high-profile battles at compa…
Work, Justice, and Collective Capital Institutions: Revisiting Rudolf Meidner and the Case for <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Wage‐Earner</span> Funds
ABSTRACT This article makes the case for a specific variety of what we call Collective Capital Institutions (CCIs), by returning to the idea of Wage‐Earner Funds (WEFs) – a 1970s Swedish policy proposal designed gradually to shift ownership and control over parts of the economy to democratically controlled institutions. We identify two attractive rationales in favour of such a scheme and argue that both can fruitfully be transposed to the current worldwide economic situation. The egalitarian rationale is that WEFs could help in the pursuit of equality by giving a wider set of people a stake in collectively owned companies and a right to their profits. The democratic rationale is that WEFs redistribute not only these profits, but also the power over economic decisions made within companies. We then contrast such schemes for collective capital ownership with the similar but much more privatised proposals set out in, for instance, John Rawls's idea of a ‘property‐owning democracy’. We argue that CCIs ultimately are more likely to contribute to the development of the ‘sense of justice’ within society that is needed for a stable just society. We conclude that CCIs deserve a great deal more exploration in academic and political discussions of egalitarian economic systems.
The rise of the "successful" unsustainable company
We're funding too many unsustainable companies.
Funding the Commons | Public Goods Funding
We convene researchers, builders, and institutions to develop the funding mechanisms, governance systems, and coordination tools that public goods need in an age of AI.
