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RE: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded
Dear
Dan, your response encouraged me to resend the private
message
that I
sent to Don to the list...For those outside Vermont,
Bryant and
McLaughrey are known for both for their
conservative views and love of
Vermont....
Best
wishes,
Cecile
-----Original
Message-----
From: Cecile G. Betit
[mailto:cgbetit@sover.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:14
AM
To: 'donjam@together.net'
Subject: RE: Vermont Employee
Ownership Center funded
Dear Don,
If I may add some ideas to your ideas re
the dilemma (from two different pieces of my own writing).
(Civic humanism comes from Bryant and McLaughrey's *Vermont
Papers*. Rokeach used the word
socialism but given that our culture sees it as a synonym for
communism, in my dissertation, I
credited Bryant and McLaughrey with the term civic
humanism.)...Let me know if I can be of
support to you in your new work....Cecile
1. In The
Capitalist Manifesto, Louis Kelso presented a vision of employee-ownership and
a compass for change of the “partly capitalistic and partly laboristic economy
to a well-balanced and completely capitalistic economy” within a democratic
framework (Kelso and Adler 1958: 252). In this view, employee-ownership
not only changes stakeholder citizenship relationships, it provides an offset
to the requirement of the mass-production economy for mass consumption to
maintain a high standard of living. In 1973, inspired by Kelso’s dogged
efforts to promote populism, Senator Russell Long introduced ESOP legislation
with tax incentives to further employee-ownership. There was broad support for
the idea that employees owning their companies would balance some of the
deficiencies growing within the United States economic system (Rockefeller
III: 1973). Two decades later, such thinking has contemporary
advocates. Jeff Gates, for example, addresses the challenge of
capitalism in the context of changing stakeholder citizenship relationship and
stewardship. He sees the dilemma as “fashioning a social contract that
can channel financial capital’s return-seeking properties in a way that
balances financial with other goals—social, fiscal, political, cultural,
environmental.” He offers The Ownership Solution as a means of meeting that
challenge within a “people-based, feedback-intensive, self-organized,
self-designed system” (1998: 292-293) thus joining employee-ownership with
full participation of its stakeholder citizens. Participation has been found
to be critically important. Early efforts to mount employee-ownership
had disappointing results in those areas involving productivity. For
improvements in production, it appears that employee participation must
accompany employee-ownership. Multi-faceted approaches for increasing
participation (W. Smith 1992; J. R. Blasi 1990) similar to those being
implemented within the Carris Companies, seemed to be most effective.
For example, Marens et al. found that ESOPs “can be a useful mechanism for
building a stakeholder relationship.” That usefulness might be in
“anchoring participation programs in a tangible and credible manner” (1999:
73). Employing meta-analysis (a statistical technique for distilling a
single estimate from a number of studies) of 43 studies, Doucouliagos
estimated the “average correlation between productivity and various forms of
participation.” He found that profit sharing, worker ownership and
worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with
productivity. All the observed correlations are stronger among
labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among
participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation
schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles). (1995:
58)
Rockefeller III, J.D. (1973) The Second American Revolution: Some
Personal Observations. (New York: Harper and
Row).
2. In 1974, Rokeach described how the values
of freedom and equality might be organized as values orientations within
certain political ideologies. He then assigned values orientations to each of
the world’s four major political ideologies which he named as a
Freedom-Equality Model of Political Variations: high freedom and high equality
to socialism (as we have observed the emotional response to this word, it
would seem more appropriate to use terms like civic humanism or social
democracy and therefore the former is used); low freedom and low equality to
fascism; high freedom and low equality to capitalism and low freedom and high
equality to communism (in its early ideals).
A Freedom-Equality Model of Political
Variations
Equality
High
|
Communism
|
Civic Humanism
|
|
Freedom low
Fascism |
Freedom high
Capitalism |
Equality
Low
In "Value Changes and Stabilities," Rokeach (1974) reported that from
1969-1972, there was no significant difference in the ranking for Freedom,
considered in these studies a personal value. Equality, a social value (among
other values) became significantly more important. Neither education nor
income were determinants of values change (this specific finding has not been
replicated in several values studies). Feather (1979) reported conservatism to
be negatively related to the relative importance of values of "equality,
freedom, love, and pleasure." Inglehart’s study in 1985 used a time series
design, generated from representative national samplings taken in 1968, 1971,
1974 and 1981. The highest six items in 1968 were the same in 1981. Freedom
was ranked third throughout. The middle range changed the most and the
findings on Equality are telling. In 1968, it was ranked 7. In 1971 it was
ranked 4 in order of importance; and in 1974 and 1981, the ranking was 12.
-----Original
Message-----
From: owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu [mailto:owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu]On
Behalf
Of Don Jamison
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 10:35 AM
To:
EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu
Subject: Re: Vermont Employee Ownership Center
funded
Thank you for posting the article, Cecile. We should
talk sometime!
The news about the funding is indeed good, but after the
press conference,
I'm feeling a little burned -- it's pretty much
impossible to avoid
offending considerable numbers of people when one's
initiative is embraced
by a "socialist." I have a bit of damage
control to do... Oh well!
Don
Jamison
donjam@together.net
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu
[mailto:owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu]On
Behalf
Of Dan Bell
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 10:38 AM
To:
EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu
Subject: Re: Vermont Employee Ownership Center
funded
Don,
The Ohio Employee Ownership Center's funding
includes money
from Ohio's Republican administration and federal
funding
initiated under a Democratic administration.
Employee
ownership transcends party lines. The fact that a
Socialist supports it too,
should not be seen as a problem.
You can just tell your non-Socialist
supporters that they
have succeeded in taking a step towards converting
their
Socialist colleague to broad-based Capitalism...
Good luck and
congratulations!
:)
Dan
At 10:35 AM 11/28/01 -0500, you
wrote:
>I'm feeling a little burned -- it's pretty much impossible to
avoid
>offending considerable numbers of people when one's initiative is
embraced
>by a "socialist." I have a bit of damage control to
do... Oh well!
--
Dan Bell
International Program
Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent,
OH 44242
(330) 672-0333 << Direct number!
(330) 672-3028 general
office number
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/
http://cog.kent.edu
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