Purpose: Drivers and barriers for employee ownership vary between countries because of differences in Politics, Institutions and the Economy (PIE). By analyzing this variation, the purpose of this study is to answer why employee ownership has developed fast in the United States and not in...

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.

Purpose: This paper reviews the evolution, current state and ongoing trends of the empirical literature on employee-owned firms (EOFs). Design/methodology/approach: Using a structured literature review methodology, I analyze 280 empirical publications on EOFs published in English peer-reviewed...

Purpose: The mainstream framework for corporate governance is that all corporate activity should be directed towards shareholder wealth maximization. This article posits that public policy should move away from shareholder primacy and instead recognize employees as key contributors to corporate...

Purpose: This paper will discuss two problems that have plagued the literature on the Ward-Domar-Vanek labor-managed firm (LMF) model, the perverse supply response problem and the horizon problem. The paper also discusses the solution to the horizon problem and the alleged “solution” of a...

Purpose: In some political and economic situations, it may be desirable to have a company that operates with a legal structure that is midway between the two extreme poles of the private sector (i.e. privatisation) and the public sector (i.e. nationalisation). In such situations none of the...

Purpose: This essay is a tribute to Jaroslav Vanek who spent 32 years at Cornell University where he founded the Program on Participation and Labor-Managed Systems (PPLMS) in 1970, which became the home for economic research on these issues in the US. It is a brief intellectual history of a...

Purpose: The purpose is to evaluate the performance of consumers' cooperatives in the United States over the last 100 years. This evaluation is based on an overlooked series of surveys undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 1920 and 1950. Where possible, the series are...

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to summarize the relationship between the research of Jaroslav Vanek on labor-managed firms (LMFs) and the research of Gregory K. Dow on the same topic. Design/methodology/approach: The article reviews the research of Jaroslav Vanek in the 1970s and...

Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to provide an assessment of the intellectual impact of the work of Jaroslav Vanek in the related fields of participation and labor management (hereafter, PLM) and participation and employee ownership (hereafter, PEO). Design/methodology/approach: This...