🗳 A little help from my friends
Weekend Newsletter Vol. 💯
Welcome Back + A Request
Hi folks - Some of you may have noticed that I skipped last week’s newsletter. The problem with a (temporarily) one-person shop is that when the wind blows hard enough, the whole team gets knocked over. If we missed something important this week, lmk.
Now, one thing worth celebrating: This is our 100th weekend newsletter! When we started EO+WD, it was just a little dispatch (shoutout to Megan G. and my other Mustangs). In June, we’re stepping things up: we’ll have a new marquee sponsor, explore new formats based on your feedback, and be working on a rebrand. My request of you:
👉 Please take this 4-minute survey 👈
…to help shape the next 100 newsletters. We’ll share what we learn in the next couple of weeks. Until then, thank you for reading, you beautiful group of startup founders, worker-owners, policy nerds, and field-builders—and curious people who care about power, ownership, and work.
– Mark
🥃 Top Shelf News
Colin Birkhead of Willamette won the Renjen Prize for Faculty Excellence for scholars “whose work has been widely disseminated and garnered recognition in the public sphere.” Congrats Colin!
The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) announced Graeme Nuttall, architect of British employee ownership trusts, as a new NCEO Fellow
Florida’s EHC construction is now employee-owned; employee-owned JMT of of Maryland completed an acquisition of Clark Nexuses of Virginia
🌇 Upcoming Employee Ownership Events
For a full list, see this page. Here is what’s up in the next two weeks:
June 3: Natalie Reitman-White and Ellen Harrison present on purpose trusts at the American Bar Association
June 4: Rethinking Ownership for People and Planet at SXSW London features Purpose Economy’s Annika Schneider
June 5-7: The Ohio Worker-Ownership Network’s Ohio Co-Op Solidarity Tour
🔊 White Papers and Analysis
A textile distributor in Indiana shares the importance of employee ownership to her family
Schröder and Thomsen publish a piece on foundation ownership and sustainable capitalism; Tima Bansal asks what the firing of Novo Nordisk’s CEO means about foundation ownership
In Inc., Brian Contreras asks if employee ownership is the answer to the economic stress of tariffs
📚 New Academic Papers
Is May the month all the academic papers drop? Wowza:
Asuquo Imagha et al. find a positive correlation between employee participation and financial performance at a Nigerian bank
El Kerbani and Elouadi find a positive correlation between employee share ownership and motivation and commitment in Morocco
Jason Spicer reviews Ferreras et al.’s 2024 book, Democratizing the Corporation
Benson et al. examine the ownership structure of media companies, including by employees, in France, Sweden, and the US
Denise Kasparian compiles six case studies of platform cooperatives, which include cooperative ownership of app-based food delivery companies
Noa Gafni includes “innovative ownership models” as one of her five trends corporate board leaders need to know about
Brooke Bode et al. examine how formerly employee-owned New Belgium Brewing balanced growth and company values post-acquisition
Lasagabaster and Agirretxe explore the gender pay gap in Spain’s Mondragon cooperatives
Siedlok et al. examine collective entrepreneurship in cooperatives in New Zealand
Claassen et al. write about worker identity in government-certified cooperatives in South Korea
Julie Cortes thinks worker cooperatives can reinvigorate the American Dream
Matt Mazewski wants to know how many American firms could become employee owned (Answer: 1.24 million with 58 million workers)
