Projects
ROOF's projects were in five categories:
1. Academic Awards
ROOF spent a total of $35,000 on academic awards: five Corey Rosen Fellows at Rutgers; two in 2011 and one per year from 2012 to 2015, as well as support for Dr. Frank Shipper of Salisbury University to work on case studies of employee ownership companies.
The academics who received Corey Rosen Fellowships are:
Felice Klein, the current-year Rosen Fellow, is using employee surveys and related laboratory experiments to explore gender inequities in broad-based equity compensation plans. She is an assistant professor at the Michigan State University School of Human Resources and Labor Relations.
Dan Weltmann is using the National Bureau for Economic Research Shared Capitalism Research Project dataset to examine how various levels and thresholds of employee stock ownership affect employee behaviors such as effort and performance, shirking and responses to shirking, turnover, absenteeism, and a variety of employee attitudes. He is a Ph.D. candidate in industrial relations and human resource management at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.
Ariana R. Levinson is using social movement theory to provide insights for workers, unions, and lawmakers on the conditions under which worker cooperatives are successfully established in order to comprehend what legal reforms would render them a more viable option in the business sector. She is an assistant professor at the University Of Louisville Brandeis School Of Law with a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.
Andrea Kim is examining the effectiveness of broad-based profit sharing and ESOPs on employees' work-related outcomes as well as their relations with other human resource management practices. He is a Ph.D. candidate in industrial relations and human resources at Rutgers University.
Matthew Thomas is addressing the geography of retirement income data sets on ESOPs and related statistical studies. He is a doctoral candidate in economics at the New School University
In addition, a ROOF award supported the case studies researched and written by Frank Shipper of Salisbury University, including SRC Holdings: Winning the Game While Sharing the Prize; Equal Exchange: Doing Well by Doing Good; MBC Ventures, Inc., An ESOP with a Union Partner; and TEOCO (The Employee Owned Company): Principled Entrepreneurship and Shared Leadership. Along with additional research, they formed the basis for a book entitled Shared Entrepreneurship: A Path to Engaged Employee Ownership. Although marketed by its publisher Palgrave Macmillan primarily to academics, it has drawn attention from those interested in management, entrepreneurship, corporate governance, project management, and innovation according to Amazon.com. In addition, earlier versions of the cases were published in textbooks and the Journal of Business Case Studies. Furthermore, the research was used a basis for articles published in Organizational Dynamics and Organization Management Journal, numerous presentations at The Rutgers Employee Ownership Symposiums, an invited presentation at the University of Oxford, and multiple professional development workshops at the Academy of Management annual meetings.
2. Trade Association Outreach
Outreach to trade associations includes placement of articles in trade publications and speakers at trade shows. ROOF covered the staff time and time by a contractor to approach NCEO member companies to request their help in connecting with their trade associations.
3. State-Level Outreach
The focus of the state-level outreach program changed over the years. In the beginning its goal was to make information and materials available to people involved in state-level policy-making to encourage them to use employee ownership as a tool.
It became a project aimed at supporting one of the NCEO's biggest initiatives: creating state centers for employee ownership. The NCEO and the Beyster Institute launched a joint project to host the California Employee Ownership Center. We pursued activities in a number of states including Oregon, Kentucky, Washington, and Georgia, that exposed a number of people to employee ownership and developed a number of resources that we can use in other situations and for other states.
ROOF also supported our current efforts to create a successful and sustainable state center in Pennsylvania, which has dedicated volunteers and people willing to contribute funds to share the investment. We expect the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership (www.OwnershipPennsylvania.org) to be the flagship state center and to increase the amount of employee ownership in-state, but also to provide a core set of tools, templates, and best practices for the creation of centers in other states.
ROOF made a sub-grant to the Ohio Employee Ownership Center to allow it to create a comprehensive summary and assessment of state centers for employee ownership. That 57-page document has primarily served as an internal resource for NCEO staff, and we expect to borrow heavily from it to support the continued development of the state centers project.
4. General Outreach
ROOF supported the development of a number of professionally designed and produced materials, especially an interactive map, booklets, and infographics, intended to speak directly to a non-technical audience. The current infographics are What Is an ESOP?, ESOPs in the U.S., and The Economic Power of Employee Ownership. ROOF also made a sub-grant to the Foundation for Enterprise Development to support the creation of a 5-minute excerpt of its documentary film We the Owners. These materials are designed to be easy to share and are publicly available at www.esopinfo.org.
ROOF also supported the design of a mailer (Build a Better Business with Employee Ownership) to introduce employee ownership to business owners. The NCEO paid for the printing and distribution of 36,000 copies.
5. International Programs
International programs were 1% of overall ROOF expenditures. The main expense was to support a trip Corey took to South Africa to help guide the development of employee ownership legislation there.