Employee-owned businesses have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest as possible ‘alternatives’ to the somewhat tarnished image of conventional investor-owned capitalist firms. Within the context of global economic crisis, such alternatives seem newly attractive. This is somewhat ironic because, for more than a century, academic literature on employee-owned businesses has been dominated by the ‘degeneration thesis’. This suggested that these businesses tend towards failure—they either fail commercially, or they relinquish their democratic characters. Bucking this trend and offering a beacon—especially in the United Kingdom —has been the commercially successful, co-owned enterprise of the John Lewis Partnership whose virtues have seemingly been rewarded with favourable and sustainable outcomes. This article makes comparisons between John Lewis Partnership and its Spanish equivalent Eroski—the supermarket group which is part of the Mondragon cooperatives. The contribution of this article is to examine in a comparative way how the managers in John Lewis Partnership and Eroski have constructed and accomplished their alternative scenarios. Using longitudinal data and detailed interviews with senior managers in both enterprises, it explores the ways in which two large, employee-owned, enterprises reconcile apparently conflicting principles and objectives. The article thus puts some new flesh on the ‘regeneration thesis’.
Business account for solopreneurs and teams | Holvi Europe
Online business banking ✔︎ Invoicing ✔︎ Bookkeeping ✔︎ Debit, credit and virtual cards ✔︎ Receipt scanning ✔︎ Expense management. Simplify work life.
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.
annotations: William Baumol : un entrepreneuriat réellement productif
Blog de sciences économiques et sociales de Martin Anota. Traductions, revues de presse.
The Routledge Handbook of Cooperative Economics and Management
Cooperatives have spread across virtually all continents. Today, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) recognises over 3 million cooperatives with 1 billion cooperative members or about 12% of the human population and serving many more members of the public, collectively owning trillions in assets. This handbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject and the current state of affairs with regard to the study of cooperation in the economy generally and of the cooperative and related sectors particularly. It highlights the essential issues and debates; provides a future research agenda, outlining the distinctions and similarities between individual and (inter)organisational cooperation; and explores the connections of cooperative economics and management to fundamental ethical principles. This book examines coopetition and the similarities and differences between competitive economics and cooperative economics, identifying to what extent and how cooperative economics and management are more capable of addressing the problems of global neoliberalism, such as ecological collapse, wealth inequity, value capture, and distribution, including via online platforms and social/relational problems. This book offers a variety of new research and theory‑building from various disciplines, particularly focusing on the fields of economics and management but extending beyond these disciplines to domains such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science. It will become the standard reference work for not only a broad and large audience of scholars, researchers, and students but also interested professionals, policymakers, regulators, and cooperators in the field wishing to orient themselves in a global, rapidly developing movement and field of study with reference to issues of producing and allocating resources and focusing on the impact of cooperation on issues like risk, trust, the development of preferences, institutional governance, networks, and inequity. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. The handbook has received an Honorable Mention for the Joyce Rothschild book prize.
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.
How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op
In Spain, an industrial-sized conglomerate owned by its workers suggests an alternative future for capitalism.
Overcoming Barriers to Employee Ownership: Insights From Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
This research investigates the limited adoption of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) among small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. Through interviews with 30 SMB owners across various industries, we identify the key barriers to ESOP adoption as lack of time, money, and skills on the part of the owners. In doing so, the study suggests that a “shared ownership light” model, which involves sharing profits, information, and decision-making opportunities with employees, appears more feasible for SMBs than ESOPs. For SMBs that are interested in ESOP adoption, our research suggests that organizations providing employee ownership services could better assist SMBs by offering templatized models and best practices for profit-sharing plans, open-book management, and structured employee participation. The paper aims to broaden the discussion around shared ownership by considering a spectrum of options that have the potential to increase both value creation by and value-sharing among employees.
Steward Ownership, Sustainability, and Capitalism: Part 1
We Found The Radical Solution That Could End Corporate Monopolies
Company as a Commons
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.
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 Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There
From two leading economists comes a groundbreaking new portrait of the hidden fortunes of Main Street business owners—ordinary Americans who built extraordinary wealth and are quietly rewriting the rules of money and power. Most people think the path to great wealth runs through Wall Street or Silicon Valley. We’re told you must be a Zuckerberg, a Musk, or a Jamie Dimon to get rich. But this story is wrong. Drawing on unprecedented data from a decade of research and vivid real-life stories of entrepreneurs—from a self-made hot-dog stand billionaire to the heirs of an auto dealer—Zidar and Zwick reveal a surprising truth: prosperity is more attainable, more widely distributed, and closer to home than we imagine. A multitude of Americans have built staggering fortunes by running often unglamorous businesses far from the spotlight. A quiet revolution in the business world—the rise of “pass-through” firms like S-corporations and partnerships—supercharged this wealth, channeling vast income directly to business owners rather than traditional corporations.Part economic detective story, part roadmap to riches, this book reveals: —The Hidden 1%: They might be a local beer distributor, a dentist with a regional network of practices, a commercial HVAC contractor with trucks around town, or a restaurateur who keeps opening new locations. For every public company CEO, more than a thousand private business owners each have transformational wealth.— The Blueprint for Wealth: Zidar and Zwick describe where Main Street Millionaires come from, how they grew rich, and how much money they make. Their stories suggest the American Dream is not dead and many paths to prosperity remain open today. — Power Brokers: Armed with their fortunes, Main Street Millionaires wield power in city halls, statehouses, and Washington, often bending policy to protect what they’ve built. They are both growing the economic pie and grabbing bigger slices for themselves.The Everywhere Millionaire celebrates the stories of entrepreneurs who seized opportunities while asking hard questions about how concentrated wealth and power shape society. It is an essential guide to seeing the economy as it really is and recognizing the surprising paths to prosperity—and influence—everywhere.
After Capitalism: A Cooperative Economy (Documentary)
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.
Introducing the Ownership Model Canvas
A new tool to re-align business success with ownership
Post-growth entrepreneurship
Will Ruddick on "Commitment Pooling" to Build Economic Commons | David Bollier
Grassroots Economics — Community-Powered Economies
Built, Owned & Stewarded in Europe
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Database of Alternative Ownership Enterprise Investment Funds And Vehicles