RSVP to this event for meeting access:
An email with the meeting URL will be sent to attendees ~1 hour before the meetup
About the Book Review:
Continuing from our meetings on August 2 & September 6, Part 3 of this book review will discuss the idea that companies flourish when they become centers of interdependence, or “communities of enterprise.”
Thoroughly revised with an expanded focus on employee ownership and workplace democracy, Companies We Keep celebrates the idea that when employees share in the rewards as well as the responsibility for the decisions they make, better decisions result. This is an especially timely topic. Most of the baby boomer generation—the owners of millions of American businesses— will retire within the next two decades. In 2001, 50,000 businesses changed hands. In 2005, that number rose to 350,000. Projections call for 750,000 ownership transitions in 2009. Employee ownership—in both the philosophical and the practical sense—is gathering steam as businesses change hands, and Abrams examines some of the many ways this is done.
Companies We Keep is structured around eight principles—from “Sharing Ownership” and “Cultivating Workplace Democracy” to “Thinking Like Cathedral Builders” and “Committing to the Business of Place”—that Abrams has discovered in the 32 years since he cofounded South Mountain Company on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Together, these principles reveal communities of enterprise as a potent force of change that can—and will— improve the way Americans do business.
Book available at:
- https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/companies-we-keep/
- https://a.co/d/g393LMd
- https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/companies-we-keep-john-abrams/1123660800
About Austin Software Cooperatives Meetup:
Software co-operatives and meritocracies are more complex than you might think. These concepts sit on the intersection of self-organizing groups, capitalism, consultancies, meritocracies, law, and ethics. Help us discover the best way to structure a software co-operative.
