“Ownership Without Culture Change Is Just Paperwork”
A Q&A with with Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller
Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD, is the founder and CEO of WORC, the Workforce & Organizational Research Center. WORC just released its Ownership Impact Index, and we wanted to learn more. If you’d like to be interviewed by EO+WD, let us know!
Mark: Before we get into the substantive stuff, can you share more with our readers about who you are and how you came to be interested in employee ownership?
Ellen: Sure. I started my career in HR consulting and saw firsthand how bad jobs hurt our clients’ bottom line, in addition to hurting workers, their families, and communities. We needed better data to work with to help companies know what to do to make jobs better and get better business results.
So, for my next act, I left consulting and earned my PhD at the University of Chicago where I got to work with the scholar whose research I had used in my practice for 15 years. When I finished, I continued my work at Washington University in St. Louis on the characteristics of jobs that benefit companies and employees alike. Employee ownership is one of the most powerful of those characteristics and I just fell in love!
Mark: More and more companies are exploring broad-based employee ownership, which is exciting. But it can also fall flat—companies make the structural change but never quite see the results they want, because they don’t make any steps to include workers in decision-making. We’ve known this since the 1980s, and Ed Carberry and co just published an article last year arguing that the mechanism for this is psychological ownership. Why do you think that isn’t more widely practiced?
Ellen: You’re absolutely right—and I’ve seen this happen again and again. Companies expect that giving employees an ownership stake will automatically lead to better performance or more engagement. But ownership structure alone doesn’t do that.
The key is understanding that ownership structure and ownership culture are distinct things. Structure is necessary, but not sufficient. Culture has to be intentionally built—through systematic changes to how companies operate.
Mark: You’ve said before there’s no “ownership culture fairy.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
Ellen: That’s a phrase we use a lot at WORC, half-jokingly. But it captures a common mistake: thinking that ownership is a magic fix. Leaders might hope that once the paperwork is signed and the ESOP or equity plan is in place, people will suddenly behave differently—be more accountable, innovative, invested.
But culture doesn’t work like that. You can’t just hand out shares and expect transformation. You have to change the way the company operates day to day—how managers lead, how decisions are made, what information is shared. Those things shape how employees think about their role in the company, which in turn shapes how they behave.
Mark: What does that culture shift actually look like?
Ellen: When companies get it right, employees start taking initiative. They solve problems, reduce waste, improve systems. They act like owners. But it only happens when leadership commits to reshaping the environment—not just in spirit, but in operations.
We think about it like this: what companies do—operational and managerial practices—affects how employees think about the company. That mindset drives whether they act like owners. It’s not magic; it’s systems.
Mark: One of my favorite books on this is Corey Rosen’s Beyond Engagement. Who else do you see as part of the broader movement to make ownership culture real?
Ellen: There’s a whole ecosystem here. The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) has been at this for decades. Project Equity is doing great work helping companies and communities navigate transitions. Praxis Consulting Group works closely with leadership teams to align management practices with ownership principles.
We all bring different methods and tools, but we’re all working toward the same thing: making ownership work—not just structurally, but behaviorally and culturally.
Mark: You mentioned the Ownership Impact Index—how does that differ from what companies might already be using, like engagement surveys?
Ellen: Engagement surveys measure how people feel about work—satisfaction, emotional commitment, general motivation. But that’s not the same as ownership culture.
Ownership culture is about whether employees think like owners and act like owners. That’s what the Index measures. In a study we ran comparing it to two leading engagement tools, we found that 96% of what we measure isn’t covered by those tools. It’s like trying to evaluate cardiovascular health by asking about bicep curls—it’s just not the same thing.
Mark: Can you share a bit more about the scale itself? What kinds of things are you measuring that others don’t? And what kind of scale did you use when developing it?
Ellen: We’re measuring the two things that create an ownership culture – what companies do operationally and managerially and what employees do behaviorally. We call what companies do “Mindset Igniters” – practices that ignite an ownership mindset among employees – and we call what employees do “Ownership Behaviors.”
Mindset Igniters include things like involving workers in decision-making and communicating strategic goals in a way that helps employees understand how they can help the company reach them. Ownership Behaviors are things like making suggestions for cost savings and helping coworkers.
For your second question, do you mind if I nerd out for just a minute?
Mark: Sure…maybe just a little.
Ellen: I’ll keep it brief. The Ownership Impact Index was derived from the peer-reviewed scientific evidence base using advanced statistical modeling. We started by reviewing over 150 articles (and there were a couple of meta-analyses in there that covered another 200 or so). Our goal was to understand what was most important to measure and how others have been measuring it. Then, we drafted a LOT of test survey questions that were all written at a 7th grade reading level, fielded the survey with 1,500 people, and did a lot of math called structural equation modeling (SEM). SEM allows us to essentially test whether we’re measuring the concepts we want to measure in the most valid and efficient way.
We did the math twice, once for the Mindset Igniters and once for the Ownership Behaviors. Then we did a time trial to be sure the final set of survey questions could be completed in no more than 5 minutes.
We ended up with a 4-minute survey with what’s called “excellent model fit.” And then we had a big party!
Mark: Okay, final question: if you had a magic wand—not the ownership culture fairy wand, but a regular magic wand—what’s one thing you’d change in the broader ecosystem to make ownership culture more common and sustainable?
Ellen: You means besides a LOT more money to fund research?! What I really want is for everyone who sits at the front end of the process – advisors, valuation professionals, trustees (in the case of ESOPs) – to believe with 100% certainty that building an ownership culture is the lynchpin for achieving maximum benefit and reducing risk, and that they would incorporate resources and supports early in the process to help companies to get there.
Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller is the founder and CEO of WORC, the Workforce & Organizational Research Center. Learn more about the Ownership Impact Index and WORC at worcimpact.com.
