🦾 Ownership of the Means of Deduction?
The Ownership Economy Newsletter, Vol. 140
Welcome back!
From Dr. Hand: It was a tall glass of water to see some of you in person at the US’s largest-ever employee ownership conference—2,300 people! For the FOMO-prone, check out all the #NCEO LinkedIn posts and the presentation PDFs. Two highlights:
“Every company should be an employee-owned company” was a pretty great phrase to hear from best-selling author Adam Grant.
In the ubiquitous talk about AI, here’s what struck us: Many companies will by default turn AI into more bossware to control and coerce and control their employees.
The alternative? Give employees decision-making power over how AI is used in the workplace, as Paula D’Ambrosa argues this week.
The American founders were concerned about ownership of land, the Marxists about ownership of the means of production. Maybe we call this...worker ownership of the means of deduction? 😏
Many thanks to the NCEO for their sponsorship of The Stakehold and for the invitation to Milwaukee. Still feeling FOMO? Check out the NCEO Forum in August.
👉 In This Issue
🏙️ Events + Jobs
For a full list of upcoming events, see our events page. Share your conference recaps with us, too!
April 13: The Institute for Law and Governance in Austria hosts The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It
April 13: Well Built Consulting’s Building an Exit, Securing a Legacy webinar
April 17: St. Mary’s University’s Making Sense of AI with the Cooperative Movement webinar
April 19-21: The Exit Planning Institute’s annual summit in Nashville
April 22: Project Equity’s session on Building a Culture of Ownership at the B Lab Champions Retreat in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 22: Kellogg College at Oxford’s Impacting Investing with Mutuality: Redesigning Capital for Shared Prosperity, on the side of the Skoll World Forum
April 23: Common Trust’s Owners Session: Turning Culture Into Ownership webinar with Cypress Valley Meat Company
April 23: Introducing the Purpose Trust Ownership Network (PTON), hosted by Program Manager Issie Corvi and Cofounder Jenny Everett
👩💻 Jobs
Boston Impact Initiative is looking for a Director of Development and Investor Relations
MCE Social Capital is hiring an Associate Investment Manager in Bogota
Employee Ownership
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, head of the Department of Labor, which regulates ESOPs, is facing civil rights complaints from department staff
Antony Bugg-Levine shares his take on KKR’s sale of CoollT (h/t Scott M)
ICYMI: California State University, East Bay, launched an Employee Ownership Opportunity Initiative earlier this month
🎧 Employee Ownership Canada features Aaron Schroeder of Brightspot Climate on the first episode of their new podcast, Ownership Nation
On the Poised for Exit podcast, Steve Storkan discusses employee ownership as a business exit strategy
📈 Employee stock ownership plans
NCEO’s recent webinar covered what ESOPs should prepare for in year one
40 Million Owners outlines three ESOP deal-sourcing channels: on-market brokered deals, targeted off-market outreach, and relationship-driven conversations
Katie and Brian Boland compare how Gibson and Taylor Guitars approached business succession, contrasting profit-sharing with a full ESOP transition
🎧 Journey to an ESOP’s latest episode focuses on communication, culture and trust
✊ Worker cooperatives
Nominations are open for the Cooperative Cultural Heritage List
K2 Enterprises explains worker cooperatives for CPAs and tax advisors
The Boards of the Co-op Group and Southern Co-op are merging
The Ownership Economy
Alison Lingane made New Private Markets’ list of influencers shaping the sustainable private markets ecosystem. Congrats!
Sean Geobey wants impact investors to take mutual aid seriously. We agree! On the same wavelenth:
Kellogg College at Oxford hosts an event on Impacting Investing with Mutuality this month
In Fireside Stacks, Julie Menter argues that companies are more likely to serve the public interest when values are built into structure, not just left to leadership
For Predistribution Initiative, Tom Powdrill draws on Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety to make a cybernetic case for broadening governance participation
Scott Romney argues for apprenticeships as a path to ownership
📚 Academic Updates
📢 Calls
Platform Cooperativism Consortium posted its Call for Submissions for the 2026 Solidarity AI conference
The Economy of Francesco’s call for research proposals on spiritual and narrative capital closes April 30
📜 Papers
Sebastian Martinez Hickey, Jennifer Sherer, and Emma Cohn on how community benefits agreements turn manufacturing investments into shared prosperity
Erik K. Olsen on opportunities in employee ownership research
Jeremy Bennett on the impact on innovation of shared-risk culture