Welcome Back! From Colin:
Researchers from Cornell, UC Berkley, and MIT find that profit sharing materially impacted the wealth of less-skilled French workers without negatively affecting the productivity or the wealth of other employees. Hey, that’s great!…right?
As we say in the academic biz, “Well, sort of.” The authors estimate that labor’s share of profits increased more than accounting profits decreased (1.8% vs. 1.4%). That’s the good news for fans of profit sharing. The not-as-good news is that there was no noticeable effect on firm productivity, and that 0.4% difference mostly came from reduced corporate income tax payments.
The comprehensiveness of the study (~600K firms per year from 1985-1997) and the rigor of the journal should give readers confidence, and the research will probably be considered in the same class as Kim and Ouimet’s thorough 2014 analysis of ESOPs in the US.
The bottom line: to increase equity and decrease wealth and income inequality via employee ownership, there probably needs to be a bigger incentive to business owners than profit sharing alone can provide.
Top Shelf News
NCEO and PTON announce new partnership to strengthen the purpose trust ecosystem
🇬🇧 England launches a new £10 million initiative to develop more co-ops
🇨🇭 Swiss cloud provider Infomaniak goes public as a public-interest foundation
The latest Owners at Work podcast—featuring The Stakehold—is out! It features William Foley’s latest research on (1) unions and employee ownership; and (2) job satisfaction in worker cooperatives:
👉 In This Issue
If you’re new here, friend, welcome! You may want to start with Stories & Dealflow.
Events and Opportunities
News
Stories and Dealflow
Research and Insights
🏙️ Events and Opportunities
For events more than a week away, see our main Events page.
Oct 6: The ICCM’s short course on circularity as co-operative strategy in the Arlington, VA area // The EO Capital Roadmap Roadshow hits Philly // SSIR’s Closing the Renter Wealth Gap // NCEO’s How to Tell Your Ownership Story // The Next Economy and Greater Melbourne Foundation host Enrich Sahan in Melbourne
Oct 6-8: AFN’s 2026 Grantmaker Conference: Igniting Change for Inclusive Prosperity in Philadelphia
Oct 7-8: NCEO’s Women’s Summit and Repurchase Obligation Workshop in Detroit // EOT Advisors’ webinar for owners learn about EOTs // The Steward Ownership Academic Day in Amsterdam // US Co-ops’ Cooperative Impact Conference in D.C.
Oct 8: eoa’s second eoaLive! in Manchester, UK // The Cooperative Hall of Fame 2026 induction ceremony in DC // NCEO’s What are the Rs of ESOPs?
Opportunities
For more, including for jobs *at* employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
Asset Funders Network | Central Texas Program Officer. Deadline: Today
DAWI | Project Manager CA Seed (Contract). Deadline: Monday
NeighborWorks Montana | ROC Post Purchase Manager
Worldwide Education Services | Investment Associate
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
Oct 19: Deadline for the NCEO Annual Conference call for 2027 speakers
UPenn announces their 2027 leadership program for ESOP CEOs, Presidents and successors
Faces in new places: Kristine Kerr joins NCEO // Mary Fair joins Tandem // Shannon Litton became 3LS’s Chief Integration Officer. Congrats!
Ownership on Purpose
For even more news on organizational purpose, take a sneak peek at next Tuesday’s Ownership on Purpose newsletter
🇪🇺 An EU decision on steward and employee ownership frameworks is expected on Oct 8; Netherlands and Germany also make strides with national legislation
B Corps in Spain collectively call for regenerative tourism to mitigate externalities
🎙️ B Lab’s Brigitta Nemes analyzes how the B Corp standards relate to company purpose and stakeholder governance
illycaffè just renewed its B Corp status under the new V2 standards…
…but B Corps, like other types of organizations, are limited in their ability to to scrutinize product sourcing of raw materials
The Ownership Economy
🇫🇷 Driven by policy changes, employee representation In France grows from about 7% in 2015 to 12.8% in boards across 85.7% of companies in the SBF 120 index
Boulder’s (CO) Board of Commissioners pledges $11.2M of $42.5M needed to convert San Lazaro’s mobile home community into resident-owned real estate
Shelterforce’s Steve Dubb reports on new models to drive community ownership
NeighborWorks examines shared equity housing in community land trusts as a path to ownership
🎙️ Transform Finance launches a new podcast, Own the Block, on community-owned real estate
Ownership Stories & Dealflow
Employee Ownership | The Institute for Policy Studies profiles Bol, Washington DC’s only worker-owned bookstore (ht TXCEO) // Broughton Consulting runs a pilot program in open-book management for frontline workers
ESOPs | SUCCESS explores why Colorado restaurant group Edible Beats became an ESOP // Newport Restaurant Group in Rhode Island celebrates 30 years as an ESOP, paying out $33M since 1996, with 12-14% staff turnover compared to industry average of 110% // New Hampshire’s Keene Sentinel profiles local ESOP, Tree-Free Greetings // 🎙️ Empowered Ventures interviews Gary Morin, president of Vermont’s largest employee-owned plumbing, heating and A/C contractor
The Ownership Economy | Kachuwa, an investment cooperative in Colorado, raises $4.2M from 83 members (OE) // Built to Last delves into community ownership with Helen Leung of LA-Más
Dealflow | FIELDS celebrates 20-year anniversary by converting to 100% ESOP (ht GACEO) // Women-founded MaMa Jean’s Natural Market transitions to 100% ESOP (ht MOCEO) // Illinois’ WEBIT Services partners with Buildkin to become 100% employee-owned as founder retires // 🇬🇧 Bell Contracting, a UK firm with 210 employees, converts to EOT // 🇬🇧 Landmark, a UK branding agency, converts to EOT
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚). Go deeper with our other topic-specific newsletters.
Employee Ownership | 📺 Project Equity CEO Evan Edwards asks, What Does EO Equal? // Remember that study on profit sharing in France? The Stanford Social Innovation Review gives a handy summary with input from Doug Kruse at Rutgers
ESOPs | Corey Rosen asserts that ESOPs can net higher ROI than M&A over time // Robert Reavis argues ESOPs are effective for transport logistics companies seeking to retain their older, blue collar workers // Kelly Finnell analyzes tax, legal and policy implications of the Roth ESOP in white paper // Will Hobby discusses the growth of ESOP M&A // Expanding ESOPs launches new website of stories, maps and data
EOTs | To paraphrase Miren Oca in her interview with Evolve Economics: You are what you measure, so measure what matters (just don’t let it become your new target, however)
The Ownership Economy | Bush and coauthors (🇬🇧) highlight the importance of communities capturing the value they create // Delta Fund enters the chat on AI governance, ownership and who profits from society’s technological gains // The Main Street Journal interviews Stephanie Gripne of Impact Finance Center // 🇬🇧 Byers reports co-ops generate more than £1.5B in income across Northern Ireland with opportunities to expand the sector further // 🇨🇦 Co-op Canada find >6,000 co-ops and mutuals generating $119B in revenue and employing ~180,000 people
Economic & Workplace Democracy | 📚 Entler and coauthors link perceptions of economic democracy and participation in decision-making with employee satisfaction // Ananda Gowda N. analyzes India’s caste system as a barrier to economic democracy // The Wellbeing Economy Alliance asks: Who gets to decide how the economy works and who it serves?
Ownership on Purpose | 📺 Fast Company’s Giving Back to Get Ahead recent panel starred Alex Amouyel of Newman’s Own (and 100% for Purpose) and Les Szabo of Dr. Bronner’s (and Purpose Pledge) // Our own Jenny Everett spoke about purpose trusts at last month’s Neighborhood Economics gathering in Galveston (paywalled)
✌️ See you next week
One final thanks to EOX for the shout out on LinkedIn this week!
That study seems strange to me. The point of profit sharing was never the increased productivity of the company. It was better wealth equality both within the company and society at large. The goal is to stop shuffling all of the wealth and value of a company into the top few employees, with a 300x wage gap between the highest and lowest paid workers (and all of the social effects that come with that wealth gap). To frame the point of profit sharing around productivity is to make it a failure at a goal it wasn’t trying to reach.