About this ebook
* Beyond the Corporation is a book for our times. Offering inspiration and vision in the wake of financial Armageddon, it is the story of ordinary people who share the ownership of the businesses where they work.
* The enterprises come in all sizes: from companies employing just a few dozen people, to large corporations: John Lewis in the UK, employing 70,000 'partners'; Mondragon, a highly entrepreneurial group of over 100 businesses in Spain, employing more than 100,000; and many examples in the US, some employing tens of thousands. It would be hard to imagine a better informed, more involved or more enthusiastic set of employees - sharing the efforts of making their companies successful, and sharing all of the rewards. Unusually in the corporate world, they control their own destinies - a situation beyond the dreams of most working people.
* Erdal takes a hard look at those who insist, in the teeth of the evidence, that shared ownership will never work - a sorry tale, he argues, of prejudice masquerading as economic thinking. The book contains detailed case studies as well as interviews with a range of people, whose inspiring stories of success fly in the face of received wisdom. These successes include: high levels of productivity; sustained rapid growth; fast-moving, innovative responses to changing worlds; high levels of investment aimed at long-term prosperity; and, above all, the sheer happiness employees experience in working together in businesses that they own together, sharing the wealth that they create.
* At a time when the 'orthodox' corporate economy has been badly shaken, Beyond the Corporation makes essential reading.
* The enterprises come in all sizes: from companies employing just a few dozen people, to large corporations: John Lewis in the UK, employing 70,000 'partners'; Mondragon, a highly entrepreneurial group of over 100 businesses in Spain, employing more than 100,000; and many examples in the US, some employing tens of thousands. It would be hard to imagine a better informed, more involved or more enthusiastic set of employees - sharing the efforts of making their companies successful, and sharing all of the rewards. Unusually in the corporate world, they control their own destinies - a situation beyond the dreams of most working people.
* Erdal takes a hard look at those who insist, in the teeth of the evidence, that shared ownership will never work - a sorry tale, he argues, of prejudice masquerading as economic thinking. The book contains detailed case studies as well as interviews with a range of people, whose inspiring stories of success fly in the face of received wisdom. These successes include: high levels of productivity; sustained rapid growth; fast-moving, innovative responses to changing worlds; high levels of investment aimed at long-term prosperity; and, above all, the sheer happiness employees experience in working together in businesses that they own together, sharing the wealth that they create.
* At a time when the 'orthodox' corporate economy has been badly shaken, Beyond the Corporation makes essential reading.
About the author
In a varied life, David Erdal won a scholarship to Oxford University; was elected as a trade union shop-steward; became for a time a professional communist organiser; worked in Mao's China; became disillusioned with totalitarian systems; distinguished himself at Harvard Business School; led one of Britain's most successful paper manufacturers and moved them into all-employee ownership; and advised companies, trade unions and governments in Slovenia, Zimbabwe, China and South Africa on privatising companies into ownership by all their employees. He gained a PhD in the psychology of sharing from St Andrews University in 2000. He is a director of a partnership that helps companies achieve all-employee buyouts, chairman of the Employee Ownership Trust and chairman of the employee ownership trust of a successful childcare company.
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