Working Groups

• The "Fair Exchange / Industrial Homestead" project: Explore the creation of policies which link government incentives provided to private corporations with reciprocal actions by these corporations to broaden ownership. This concept can also be used by community investment funds.
• Employee ownership in privatization: Analyze the uses (and abuses) of employee ownership in the privatization process internationally. Employee ownership has been used as a privatization strategy in Britain, Chile, Egypt, Jamaica, the United States, Zimbabwe, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China.
• Broadening employee ownership transnationally: Explore structures used and potential for broad employee ownership in multinational corporations; linking employee and other forms of broader ownership to the international development projects of USAID, UN agencies, and international finance agencies such as the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank; organizing transnational associations to support employee ownership; imposing a transaction tax on certain speculative global economic transactions like international currency speculation; and other transnational actions for broadening ownership.
• Building employee ownership at the national level: Canvass the range of national legislative experiences and choices to promote employee ownership and their relative advantages and disadvantages. This includes tax deductions or tax credits; national funding for technical assistance; preferential lending policies; equity funds; support for cooperative start ups; a national managerial academy; national organizations of employee-owned companies, and other ideas for strengthening employee ownership at the national level through national legislation or national organization.
• Building employee ownership at the subnational level: Look at international experience with state, regional, provincial, and city policies in the public and private sector to support the development of various forms of employee ownership. This includes both programs to support the development of more employee-owned firms at the micro level and those to support improving the performance of existing employee-owned firms through high performance management and workplace practices. This group will look as well at experience with developing training programs for employee ownership, both for non-managerial employees and management; at local loan and equity funds for employee-owned companies; at employee-owned company networks, and joint institutions which they can develop, such as purchasing, sales, and export cooperatives; and at the integrated employee-ownership support system like those in Mondragon and what is developing in Quebec.
• Fiscal Policy on Emplyee Ownership: Tax policy is possibly the most important lever which government has to promote employee share ownership. Many different countries
  have introduced tax concessions to encourage employees to invest in shares. This discussion group tries to analyse the practical effects of those concessions. We are particularly interested in promoting a debate with legislators and those seeking changes in legislation in their countries.
  

Our hope is that all participants in the Capital Ownership Group's Virtual Think Tank will get involved in at least one of the five above groups. At the same time, we understand that some participants also have the desire to maintain an ongoing discussion with those who share something in common, ie, country, region, language. For this reason, we have established this corner of COG's VTT for Additional Groups.

Each group has a coordinator who maintains the list of participants, updates the group's archive, and, from time to time, prepares a brief report on the highlights of the group's discussion to keep the rest of the COG network informed.

If you wish to establish an Additional Group, please send an email explaining the purpose of the group and why it belongs in COG's VTT to cog@kent.edu.

• BROADENING OWNERSHIP THROUGH SOCIAL INSURANCE REFORM: The Social Insurance Reform group will discuss how public sector retirement programs, such as Social Security in the United States, might be reformed to increase ownership and control of firms by their employees and customers. Group members are encouraged to offer concrete proposals on how this might occur and to relate these proposals to current policy debates.

• CHINESE DISCUSSION GROUP: The objectives of the ESOP China Group are to report, study, and analyze the Chinese experiences in employee ownership. We wish to encourage and facilitate a debate and exchange between people outside and in China, and between researchers and practitioners.

• EUROPEAN POLICY GROUP: What instruments should the European institutions implement as of now to promote the development of employee share ownership and participation and apply the PEPPER recommendations? What practical action can be taken at Community level? How and within what time frame?".
  

• ESOP INDIA GROUP:The objectives of the ESOP India Group are to conceptualize, develop, study and analyze strategies for promoting employee ownership as a tool for achieving sustainable economic growth and a just and equitable distribution of economic wealth.

• ECONOMICS OF OWNERSHIP GROUP: This group's objective is to expand the number of economists who take a professional interest in issues of capital ownership. Such economists can help identify important hypotheses at stake, and suggest appropriate and cost-effective means of testing whether changes required for implementation of broader capital ownership rights show plausible improvement in the kinds of indicators that are accepted as marks of relative economic success or failure.

• The ECONOMICS OF EMPOWERMENT GROUP is a discussion forum for participants who share the Statement of Shared Vision found below. The goal is for people who share the values expressed in the Statement to discuss ideas and ways
  of implementing them in a harmonious environment.

• INTERNATIONAL MONDRAGON STUDIES ASSOCIATION - This working group focuses on the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation (MCC) group of manufacturing, financial, retail, civil engineering, service and support co-operatives at Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain

• MONETARY REFORM: While endeavouring to discuss all aspects of monetary reform, the Group invites all groups who want a fairer and better society, including a guaranteed income security for all, to press the Four Demands on government. The First Demand is only for the recognition of a fact but, even if only the First Demand is achieved, a big breach will have been made in the wall of stale, old thinking and the way will be open for the new thinking and policy to create a better world.

• OPEN BOOK MANAGEMENT IN THE EDUCATION OF MANAGERS: Open Book Management, which leads to ownership culture, is rightly referred to as a new management philosophy. In fact, it is based on different anthropological assumptions. Traditional management is based on the idea of homo oeconomicus, which is best reflected in calling the human aspects of management: human resource management. In contrast, Open Book Management (OBM) seems to be based on the idea of the human being as a person, responsible and free to make choices. The main purpose of this group is to offer mutual support and exchange of experiences in introducing OBM to management schools and courses and carrying on OBM relevant research.

• OWNERSHIP DISTRIBUTION AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: This working group focuses on ownership strategies that can promote poverty reduction in developing countries. It has been established to encourage informed debate, exchange of information and consciousness-raising among scholars and within related academic disciplines and the wider community.
  

• SPANISH DISCUSSION GROUP: This group's objective is to discuss issues that are related to COG, but the discussants present their information in the Spanish language. A starting point for the discussion is the RORAC project. This project seeks to aid indigenous people with their problems of water irrigation and economic underdevelopment.

• RUSSIAN DISCUSSION GROUP: This group's objective is to discuss issues that are related to COG, but the discussants present their information in the Russian language. A starting point for the discussion is identifying the existing resources which support broadening ownership in Russia as well as existing obstacles.

• ORGANISED LABOUR GROUP: The purpose of this group is to exchange practical experience of worker ownership and its impact on union organisation with labour representatives around the world. Does the worker ownership promise of increased local control and greater job security hold true under modern economic conditions? Can worker ownership be a viable alternative strategy to privatisation and corporate globalisation? Is worker ownership a threat or an opportunity to trade union organising? Real life examples of worker ownership - successful and unsuccessful - will be exposed and discussed. Bring your own!