Citizen's Share: A New Book on Employee Ownership

A new book on employee ownership in the United States has been reviewed or excerpted by Time magazine, PBS, and the Economist. The Citizen's Share, a Yale University Press book by Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman, and Douglas L. Kruse, covers decades of social science research, digs into the deep roots of shared capitalism among America's founding fathers, and presents concrete policy tools to stimulate employee ownership. The publisher, Yale University Press, describes the book as showing that "an ownership stake in a corporation inspires and increases worker loyalty, productivity, and innovation. [The] book offers history-, economics-, and evidence-based policy ideas at their best."

In his article on the book, Time reporter Christopher Matthews concludes, "every working American — and the American economy in general — could benefit from having a greater stake in their company's success than hoping it survives long enough to keep cutting them paychecks." Writing in the PBS blog The Business Desk, Paul Solman says that the authors show that "worker ownership is as new as fracking, but as old as America itself. George Washington, a slave owner, remember, believed that broad-based worker ownership would ensure 'the happiness of the lowest class of people because of the equal distribution of property.'"

In contrast, an article in the Economist argues that employee ownership has both benefits and limitations, and concludes "The political appeal of employee share ownership is not in doubt. Broader stock ownership appeals to the right. Helping squeezed workers appeals to the left. Economically, however, the merits of using government incentives to encourage the phenomenon are less clear."

An excerpt (PDF) from The Citizen's Share is available at www.thecitizensshare.com, and the book is available at Amazon and all major booksellers.