Creating Inclusive Organizations through Shared Ownership, Participation and Profits

Academy of Management, Boston, 9th August 2019

Since the Great Depression of 2008 interest has grown in inclusive organizations that share ownership, participation and profits such as worker cooperatives, employee stock ownership plans (ESOP’s), perpetual trusts, and employee-owned collectives. All such organizations fall under Paul Adler’s (2016) definition of alternative economic futures. Some countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have passed legislation to encourage the development of such enterprises. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) emphasizing ESOP and cooperative associations have been established or have become more visible in multiple countries. The United Nations declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives. On July 28, 2017, the China Daily reported that employee-owned firms were growing rapidly in China. Furthermore, it attributed the resurgence of the Chinese stock market and investor confidence to the growth in shared ownership. Despite the interest and application of alternate economic forms, there is little coverage of them in both the academic (Thompson, 2014) and popular press (Alperovitz, 2017). Consequently, understanding how to develop such enterprises is not well disseminated. Thus, the purpose of this workshop was to bring together some of the leaders in this area to present some ideas and for all the participants in the workshop to work collaboratively to examine and generate additional ideas on how to disseminate knowledge about growing inclusive organizations that share ownership, participation and profits.

 Presentation