When Does Worker Ownership Work? ESOPs, Law Firms, Codetermination, and Economic Democracy

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.

Managed Returns in Employee-Owned Firms

<span>This paper examines the returns of private firms that offer shares to their rank-and-file employees through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), a type

ESF+ Study on Workers’ Buyout

This report provides a WBO overview within a European context, defines WBO and the most common models, as well as current trends and insights within the WBO context. The assessment is further enriched with insights collected from the countries analysed, incl. the mapping of the WBO frameworks in France, Spain, Italy and Slovenia and the in-debt case studies.

Launching a European Employee Stock Ownership - ProQuest

Explore millions of resources from scholarly journals, books, newspapers, videos and more, on the ProQuest Platform.

The Effects of Mandatory Profit-Sharing on Workers and Firms: Evidence from France

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

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.

Collective Bargaining in the Information Economy Can Address...

This position paper argues that there is an urgent need to restructure markets for the information that goes into AI systems. Specifically, producers of information goods (such as journalists,...

Handbook of Labor Economics

What new tools and models are enriching labor economics?Developments in Research Methods and their Application, Volume 4A summarizes recent advances in the ways economists study wages, employment, and labor markets. Mixing conceptual models and empirical work, contributors cover subjects as diverse as field and laboratory experiments, program evaluation, and behavioral models. The combinations of these improved empirical findings with new models reveal how labor economists are developing new and innovative ways to measure key parameters and test important hypotheses. - Investigates recent advances in methods and models used in labor economics - Demonstrates what these new tools and techniques can accomplish - Documents how conceptual models and empirical work explain important practical issues

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.

Call for Papers: Karl Marx and Max Weber on the Topic of Machines Dominating Labour

Part of the Joint Conference 2026 (JC2026) The 2nd RC20 Regional Conference on Comparative SociologyThe 1st RC56 Regional Conference on Historical SociologyThe 5th RC33 Regional Conference on Social Science Methodology: Asia📍 Khon Kaen University, Thailand / Japan Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan🗓 24–28 August 2026(Online Conference) Session Organizer Dr. Noel Packard, PhDIndependent Researcher and 2023 PhD...

The PEPPER V Report - Kelso Institute Europe

This Report provides an overview of the development of employee financial participation, i.e., employee share ownership and profit sharing, across the EU-27, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America as of January 2024. Against the background of the policy development of the past 35 years, it highlights the growth of financial participation over the last decade using the most recent cross-country data available, i.e., the 2021 CRANET Survey, the 2019 European Company Survey and the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey, which also show its potential positive impact on employment and productivity.

Collective action strategies in the age of AI w/ Nick Vincent from Data Leverage - The Blockchain Socialist

I spoke to Nick Vincent, assistant professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University and author of the Data Leverage substack, about what it actually means that AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity’s digital labor and what we can do about it. Nick has spent years researching how data functions as a bargaining tool, […]