Palo Alto Networks is doing extremely well, according to Morningstar’s PANW Report (view). That may be one of the better reasons—not an argument against—to ask its Board to study whether broader employee ownership could make an already strong company more durable. Morningstar’s September 2 report on Palo Alto Networks (PANW) does not discuss my shareholder […]
I am pleased to report that we have reached our first agreement with a company receiving one of our initial broad-based employee ownership transaction proposals. I am not identifying the company or disclosing the terms of the agreement at this stage, but the negotiations themselves are worth describing because they helped clarify what this campaign […]
Proxy Season: Governance Still Wins Proxy Season results for James McRitchie so far in spring 2026 look remarkably similar to our strong 2025 season. Last year, we filed 20 proposals directly, losing five and winning fifteen, mostly through agreements. This year, based on results to date, we again show 15 wins, with 4 losses and […]
This draft outlines ideas for discussion at The Future of Equity: Silicon Valley Employee Ownership Symposium, June 28-30, Palo Alto, CA. The objective is not simply to give employees stock to enable them to save for retirement or to incentivize them to work “harder.” It is to create forms of ownership that increase participation, improve […]
What if the biggest mistake in corporate governance is thinking we must choose between capitalism and democracy? That false choice is holding back innovation in ownership itself. New models—from cooperative “Regulation Membership” to employee ownership without control capture—challenge the idea that scale requires concentrated power. They show how ownership can expand without sacrificing markets, liquidity, […]
Updating Fiduciary Duty to Address Systemic Risk. Paul Rissman highlights a growing conflict between corporate directors and diversified investors. This post builds on that insight, proposing practical legal reforms—from redefining materiality to empowering employee and retail shareholders—to align fiduciary duty with systemic risk and modern portfolio theory. The goal is not to abandon shareholder primacy, […]
Employees owning 3–20% of a public company isn’t a feel‑good fringe idea—it’s one of the most underused tools we have to boost performance and democratize capitalism. Across the best empirical studies of U.S. public firms, small but meaningful employee ownership stakes and broad‑based stock options are associated with higher valuations and, in many cases, better […]
On the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, this article explores how Adam Smith’s insights on ownership and incentives illuminate capitalism’s next evolution. Expanding employee ownership—without undermining shareholder governance—could reconnect productivity, responsibility, and prosperity in modern corporations. It could also be pivotal in rescuing our political democracy.
Employee ownership without control capture could be the way out of our current quagmire. For more than three decades at CorpGov.net, I have argued that corporate governance works best when ownership, accountability, and voice reinforce one another. Too often, debates about stakeholder capitalism versus shareholder primacy miss a simple truth. Employees are not outsiders to […]
Values-Primacy & Total Governance Through Activism, by Carliss Chatman and Sergio Gramitto Ricci, argues that everyday stakeholder actions—walkouts, boycotts, consumer backlash, viral campaigns, and proxy voting—function as a real, if often unacknowledged, system of corporate governance. When individuals coordinate across their multiple social roles (worker, consumer, investor, community member), they shape corporate identity more durably […]
CII 2023 Fall Conference. I hope to see many of you there. I’m excited about the theme, “Next Frontiers in Governance.” CII offers unprecedented opportunities to network, share best practices, and learn from others. The CII 2023 Fall Conference will be in-person only. Register for the conference in Long Beach, California. In preparing to meet […]
Employee ownership has a huge potential to improve firm performance, reduce layoffs, improve employee compensation and benefits, boost median household wealth, foster longer median job tenure, and reduce racial and gender wealth gaps. It also has a long history of bipartisan support. The benefits of employee ownership are wasted when too […]
Musings Missed Musings; not all of mine got mentioned at the Forum. I had the distinct pleasure of being a panelist at the Public Funds Forum 2022 with Maine’s Treasurer Henry Beck and David Wescoe, Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Retirement System. Our topic was Best Practices in Fund Governance. I thought of several […]
Johnson & Johnson 2022 annual meeting is on April 28, 2022, at 7:00 am Pacific. It is a virtual-only meeting on the Broadridge platform. Of course, I recommend voting in advance, especially since they have made it very difficult to vote at the meeting and maybe even to enter the meeting. To enhance corporate governance and long-term […]
Kellogg 2022 annual meeting is on April 29, 2022, at 10:00 am Pacific. It is a virtual-only meeting on the Broadridge platform. Of course, I recommend voting in advance, especially since they have made it very difficult to vote at the meeting and maybe even to enter the meeting. To enhance corporate governance and long-term value, vote […]
Amazon Plays April Fools Joke with shareholders. I am not laughing. Amazon’s preliminary proxy of April 1 fails to include my proposal and others where Amazon filed no-action requests with the SEC. My proposal is aimed at disclosing the Company’s distribution of stock-based incentives throughout the workforce as a first step in addressing wealth inequality. Failing to disclose pending proposals that […]
Incentive shares – shareholders have a right to know their distribution. Meta, Amazon, and Repligen argue against disclosure. Working mostly from the same template, they argue distribution of shares to employees is “ordinary business” and “does not focus on any significant policy issue that transcends the company’s ordinary business operations.” I submitted similar proposals to […]
Clorox 2021 annual meeting is Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 9:00 A.M. PST, virtually via https://meetnow.global/MNGZAZQ. You will also need your 15-digit control number. Of course, I recommend voting in advance. To enhance corporate governance and long-term value, vote AGAINST Auditor; FOR #5 Increase Diversity of Director Nominees – Include Non-Management Employees on Candidate List. (more…)
Employee ownership is my next focus. Support for proposals in 2020 and 2021 to encourage companies to add workers to the board has been weak. It is time to reassess. My conversations with CalPERS were especially interesting. Directors I interviewed who were elected by the members favored our proposals. Staff, those charged with voting shares […]
Recovery AND Broader Ownership: Take Action Economic recovery AND broader ownership can be ours. We need a nation of employees who more fully share and participate in a healthy recovery through ownership. Support legislation introduced by Republicans and Democrats: S 4236, [Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)] inject working capital into American […]
Kokkinis and Sergakis – A Flexible Model for Efficient Employee Participation in UK Companies by Andreas Kokkinis & Konstantinos Sergakis, 17 Feb 2020 (download), provides several insights that may be helpful in guiding US efforts as well. As mentioned in my coverage of the recent SHARE Summit, #SHARE2020, I am investing in public companies with employee ownership. […]
Through a proxy proposal, we asked the Twitter board to study broad-based ownership, such as cooperatives, for lessons to be learned on how to make Twitter both more productive and more democratic. The proposal won enough votes to be brought back next year. In the meantime, we continue building a campaign and studying broad-based ownership […]
According to Susan Neiman, the most important distinction in the world is the difference between what is and what ought to be. Recognizing that distinction is central to the process of growing up. (Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age) You need not be Peter Pan to feel uneasy about the prospect of […]
Matt Cropp, Associate Director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center and Marjorie Kelly, Executive Vice President of the Democracy Collaborative, discuss employee and community ownership, with a specific discussion of the Keep BT Local Campaign. (more…)
Corporate Governance Publisher’s Note: Yes, you’ll find many broken links in the material referenced below. After 5, 10 and 15 years, the internet moves on. Many of the organization’s linked have since gone under. We’re just glad to still be here, offering our readers a sense of the history we have shared. More about the WABAC machine. […]
Laura Flanders interviews Christopher Mackin, the founder of Ownership Associates, an advisory firm for broad-based employee ownership based in Cambridge, MA. Mackin is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and a member of the core faculty of the Harvard Trade Union Program based at Harvard Law School. See a previous guest post by Mackin on […]
Thought experiment: Suppose the 21,000 employees of Hobby Lobby had been anonymously polled about whether their company should pay for insurance coverage for contraception, as required by the Affordable Care Act. Suppose the results showed that a comfortable majority, say 55 percent, believed — against the views of their leaders in management — in full […]
Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) companies saw an economic upturn in 2011, with higher productivity and stock price, according to a recent survey. Why aren’t the Presidential candidates pushing the benefits of employee ownership and participation? (more…)
Time to step into the way back machine to see what we were writing about 5, 10 and 15 years ago. Five years ago @ Corporate Governance, I was pleading for readers to send comments to the SEC on their proxy access proposals. 30,000 letters wasn’t enough, in my opinion. A shareholder proposal calling for a “say-on-pay” […]
The defenders of executive compensation argue that senior executives make the most significant contribution to a company’s success; ergo, outsize compensation is justified. But the NBER Shared Capitalism Research Project has shown the opposite: Distributing rewards across the corporation—sharing them with workers—is the most efficient way of making businesses more successful. Motivated employees are more […]