Launch 'Em All

The Ownership Economy Newsletter, Vol. 145

👋 Welcome Back!

Happy Friday. I’ve been thinking about the relationship work and meaning this week.

• My buddy Claude and I came up with fourteen potential relationships, ranging from work-is-a-calling to work-is-a-curse.

So it caught my attention when The Economist wrote:

…if artificial intelligence generates so much wealth that people can be compensated for their lost wages—which is more than plausible—where will they find a sense of purpose?” - Bob Guest in The Economist This Week

As someone expecting a second child next month, I laughed at how easily I could answer this question at the moment.

• But beyond parenting and caring for others, I haven’t come to a clear conclusion on this question any more than Claude did.

• Still, I have to think that purpose (at work) is only partially about the work done and mostly about (1) who you’re doing it with, and (2) who you’re doing it for.

• What I do know: It feels pretty great to be a part of a community asking those questions not just individually, but structurally.

I’m off to daycare pickup. Happy weekend! - MCH

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Now is the week for launching…everything, it seems! All new this week:

  • Steward Market’s marketplace connecting mission-driven buyers and sellers

  • Subvert, the “Mondragon of Music”

  • The Center for Enterprise Foundations at Copenhagen Business School

  • Nathan Schneider’s new not-a-newsletter, Writings and Rehearsals (thanks for the Stakehold shoutout…and maybe subtweet‽)

  • Beloved Community Incubator’s Cooperative Futures, fusing guaranteed income with worker co-op incubation in DC

  • Professor Ralph Hall’s Community Wealth Building Library Guide

  • 🎙️ Scaled Purpose’s The Equity Gap podcast

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👉 In This Issue

• Events + Opportunities

  • This week

  • Opportunities

• Employee Ownership

  • Employee stock ownership plans

  • Worker cooperatives

  • Employee ownership trusts

• The Ownership Economy

  • Steward ownership

• Academic News

  • New papers

Editor’s note: We previously hyperlinked the “In This Issue” section, but Substack makes that a pain. A question for you:

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📅 Events + Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• May 19: Menke’s Executive Webinar on succession planning

• May 20: Austin Cooperative Business Association’s online Solidarity Economics: A Panel Discussion

  • Also in Texas, Texas Association of Community Development Corporations’ webinar with TXCEO’s Taylor Knickel

Opportunities

• The US Division of Employee Ownership created a new internship for students

• USFWC is electing new board members, recommending people, or self-nominating

• The Center for Community Wealth is hiring a Development Director

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Employee Ownership

• Rhode Island unanimously voted to establish a Center for Employee Ownership

• Project Equity compiles four businesses’ journey to employee ownership

• WORC added to its Ownership Impact Index a feature connecting culture with financial projections (h/t Danny Spitzberg)

Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

• Fogle Pump & Supply of Washington sold 49% of the company to an ESOP

• Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Aronowitz, spoke to The ESOP Association on the Department of Labor’s new stance on ESOPs

• The House Appropriations Committee included pro-ESOP language in its FY27 funding bill

• Saunders Business School reveals the lineup for its ESOP panel at the Sharpen the Saw conference

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio talks with Jeremy Ames about the increase in entrepreneurs using their retirement savings to buy businesses

  • And Great Mondays interviews Bob Whalen on his new book, Beyond Your Ownership

Worker Cooperatives

• Dean’s Beans, a worker-owned organic coffee company, was recently named as Rural Business of the Year for Massachusetts. Congrats!

• Applications for the Capital Impact Coop Innovation Award are due June 12

• Heather McKay of Coop News outlines some of the barriers for youth in co-ops and how to address them

• ICYMI: Ian Adderley’s book Co-operatives: Linking practice and theory is now on our to-read list (h/t Danny Spitzberg)

Employee ownership trusts

• Signature Vacuum of Pennsylvania is now an employee ownership trust. Congrats!

• Emily Alston explores why leadership succession is the most overlooked challenge after transitioning to an employee ownership trust (in the UK)

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The Ownership Economy

• In Nashville, The Contributor interviews Stephen Watts of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development

• Sean Geobey makes the case for credit unions and community land trusts as natural partners in closing Canada’s housing equity gap

Steward ownership

• Copenhagen Business School has officially launched its Center for Enterprise Foundations. Congrats!

• Purpose Foundation’s Annika Schneider provides insight on the Spirit Airlines buzz

• Amy Clarke argues that mission doesn’t die at exit because founders sell out, but because most ownership structures aren’t built to protect it

• Newman’s Own Foundation’s CEO makes the case for steward ownership as a succession alternative for boomer-owned businesses

• Marie Arbelias Schuster compares steward ownership and FairShares Commons, arguing FSC goes further by distributing governance across all stakeholders and ecosystems (h/t Jenny Everett)

📚 Academic News

• Harvard Divinity School opened applications for a Professor in Religion, Business Ethics, and the Economic Order

• Harvard Business School issued out a call for papers for its TOP26: Steward Ownership Conference; abstracts due June 15

• Haiming Li published a new book, Theories and Laws on Democratic Management of Enterprises in China

New Papers

• Seon Mi Kim et al. find that worker ownership and organizational support are the strongest drivers of job satisfaction among home care workers

• Andrew Skidmore looks at the relationship between ESOP comprehension and employee satisfaction

• Sor-hoon Tan proposes Confucian philosophy as an alternative for economic democracy, grounding ownership in social responsibility

• Elia Benveniste finds that worker-owned firms compress wages and flatten hierarchies, without sacrificing productivity or investment

• Peter Dorman argues that public ownership may be the fix for social media’s harms (cc Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider?)

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