The Latest Greatest Research on Employee Ownership
The Latest Greatest Research on Employee Ownership
A quick spin through the recent Kelso Workshop
TLDR: Each January, the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit-Sharing hosts a midyear workshop for recipients of its annual fellowship. Learn about what’s hot in employee ownership by browsing the program for the event.
Background: The Institute (ISEOPS, maybe?), housed in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, has since at least 2011 been funding scholars and practitioners of employee ownership. I was a Corey Rosen Fellow and Institute Fellow in 2022-2023, and many of my co-authors (Simon Pek, Colin Birkhead, Zoe Schlag) have been, too. I couldn’t go this year, so I perused the program for us.
What’s Up in Employee Ownership:
The inclusion of groups like the Predistribution Initiative signals that employee ownership advocates understand the wider field of shared ownership growing up around them, and that they have a major role to play in it.
There were quite a few presentations comparing versions of employee ownership across countries—this is encouraging to me, and auspicious for the growth of the field.
There were quite a few panels on public policy, of particular interest to me as we work on a set of policy recommendations on employee ownership trusts and perpetual purpose trusts, models that are relatively niche compared to the two main historical areas of focus for the Institute, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and worker cooperatives.
I can’t not point out that Colin Birkhead presented the beginnings of a paper we’re working on together! It explores the relationship between community social capital and the productivity gains that come from converting to employee ownership. Watch this space.
Go Deeper: For an executive summary of the most recent research on employee ownership, check out this June 2023 white paper from Joseph Blasi and Doug Kruse.
Feb 2 Update: Check out these reflections on the workshop from Curt Lyon, our friend at Transform Finance.
