EO+WD Weekend Newsletter, Vol. 15

From crisis in Russia to celebrations in the UK

Welcome Back!

Happy Friday and enjoy this week’s newsletter!

One Fun Thing

• Today is Dr. Hand’s first official day at his new job at the University of Texas at Arlington! And published his second academic paper this week, which you can read about on the UTA website.

What We’ve Been Writing 

• Dr. Hand reports out on his conversation with a bespoke employee ownership trust owner in California, and highlights what happened this week in Russia and ponders the fragility of democratic institutions 

• Reid dives into what exactly economic democracy is, and how it fits into the world of employee ownership 

• Read Megan’s overview of the celebrations held last week during the UK’s Employee Ownership Day 

What We’ve Been Reading 

• John Abrams converted his company to a worker cooperative in 1987, wrote a very digestible book about it, and wrote about both Zingerman’s and Patagonia’s ownership trust transition.

• Professor Chris Mackin walks through the history of employee ownership in the US in this podcast

• Kristin Toussaint argues that as small business owners are retiring in record numbers, they should sell their companies to their workers

• Author Mo Manklang celebrates recent U.S. policy gains, but highlights the need for follow through and implementation 

• An Oklahoma family plans to use employee ownership as the succession model for their restaurant chain 

• The Welsh government announced that the number of employee - owned companies throughout Wales is set to more than double in the past two years 

In Case You Missed It 

• Check out Dr. Hand’s report from an Employee Ownership Forum in Washington D.C.

The Employee Ownership + Workplace Democracy Research Cluster (EO+WD) is a joint project of University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) professor Mark Hand and students at Southern Methodist University (SMU).