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Dan and Cecile --
Thanks for the encouraging
words... Being out in public entails a continual political balancing act,
I suppose. I should get used to it.
Don
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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