Employee Ownership Trusts: taking employee ownership to the mainstream

Please join us for a Zoom presentation by Andrew Pendleton (University of New South Wales) of a co-authored paper with Andrew Robinson (University of Leeds, UK) sponsored by the Co-operatives Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School.

Abstract
Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) have experienced rapid growth in the UK since their introduction in 2014. Around 600 firms have converted to EOTs in the last seven years. Many are SMEs but some are large firms with several thousand employees. The EOT is now emerging in Australia, though without any specific legislative support. Several countries are currently considering legislation to promote EOTs. As such, the EOT looks to be a very successful form of employee ownership.

The presentation will outline the main features of the EOT and explain why it is an attractive form of business succession.  These design features of the EOT help to overcome some of the well-known and long-standing barriers to employee ownership, such as financing constraints and employee coordination. The presentation will provide a comprehensive account of the demographics of EOTs: size of company, location, sector, and age, drawing on data from a population study and from an in-depth survey of 210 EOTs (around one-third of the population). Finally, the presentation will outline and discuss employee involvement in governance such as representation on the EO trust and the main company board.

Biography
Andrew Pendleton is Professor of Employee Ownership and Reward in the School of Management and Governance (where he was head of school until February 2022) at the University of New South Wales. He has previously held academic posts in the UK at the universities of Bath, Bradford, Durham, Kent, Manchester Metropolitan, and York, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sydney on two occasions. He has researched employee ownership and employee share ownership for many years, and has been an active contributor to policy discussions on employee ownership in the UK, Australia, and the EU. Besides ownership, he also researches corporate governance and employment relations.