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The purpose of this paper is to assess how employees from historically marginalized groups (men and women of color and white women) perceive Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”® (BCWF) in terms of two outcomes that are related to diversity and inclusion: fairness and camaraderie. The authors focus on fairness as a way to measure perceptions of general treatment with respect to demographic characteristics associated with bias and discrimination, and on camaraderie as a way to measure perceptions of the inclusiveness of coworker relationships.

Hierarchical linear regression models are used to analyze survey responses from 620,802 employees in 1,054 companies that applied for the BCWF list between 2006 and 2011 in the USA. The authors compare the perceptions of employees in firms that are selected for the list to those of their demographic counterparts in firms not selected for the list. The authors also compare the perceptions of employees from historically marginalized groups to those of white men within firms that make the list and examine how these differences compare to the same differences within firms that do not make the list.

The findings reveal that the perceptions of men and women of color and white women in companies that make the “best” list are more positive than their demographic counterparts in companies that do not make the list. The authors also find, however, that the perceptions of employees from historically marginalized groups are more negative than those of white men in the “best” workplaces, and these patterns are similar to those in firms that do not make the list. For perceptions of fairness, the differences between employees from historically marginalized groups and white men are smaller in companies that make the list.

The findings are based on average effect sizes across a large number of companies and employees, and the data do not provide insight into the actual organizational processes that are driving employee perceptions. In addition, the employee survey data are self-reported, and may be subject to recall and self-serving biases. Finally, the authors use measures of fairness and camaraderie that have not been rigorously tested in past research.

Managers seeking to improve experiences of fairness and camaraderie should pay particular attention to how race/ethnicity and gender influence these experiences, and how they do so intersectionally. Attending to these differences is particularly important to the extent that experiences of fairness and camaraderie are related to organizational trust, the key metric on which companies are selected for the “best” workplaces list, and a quality of organizational relationships that previous research has found to be positively related to key individual and firm-level outcomes.

The paper provides the first assessment of demographic variation in the outcomes of employees in companies selected for the BCWF. Since selection to this list is based on the presence of trust, the authors’ findings also provide potential insight into how informal organizational processes that are associated with trust, such as leadership behaviors, peer relationships, and workplace norms, are viewed and experienced by men and women of color and white women. Finally, the authors analyze outcomes relating to camaraderie, a construct that has received little attention in the literature.

This chapter examines the labor-empowerment potential of emerging taxi driver cooperative-union partnerships. Cooperative-union partnerships can adopt differing stances toward the virtue of waging broad-based, class-conscious conflict against economic elites to win economic change, as opposed to the virtue of small-scale and practical steps to improve the immediate conditions of individual “job-conscious” workers. This case study utilizes a “class consciousness” versus “job consciousness” framework to examine a recent immigrant taxi driver union-cooperative partnership.

Case study of taxi driver organizing in Denver (CO), utilizing narrative inquiry, and survey and interviews with 69 drivers.

The US tradition of accommodational job consciousness continues to influence union and cooperative leaders. Among Denver’s taxi cooperatives, an emphasis on accommodational job consciousness, bereft of class perspectives, has undermined a narrative promoting worker solidarity or encouraging workers to engage in social justice campaigns for immigrant workers. The consequence has been to weaken the transformational potential of taxi driver activism.

Findings based on a single case study need to be confirmed through additional research.

Cooperative-union partnerships that adopt a class-conscious political approach, including leadership development opportunities, a “labor empowerment curriculum, and partnerships with broader social movements, are a promising alternative to narrowly tailored “job conscious” organizing strategies.

Immigrants are increasingly forming worker cooperatives, and the recent Denver taxi driver union-cooperative is one of the largest taxi cooperatives in the country. Current research on the labor empowerment consequences of these emerging immigrant cooperatives is sparse.

To examine perceptions of organizational atmosphere and joint ownership in a firm in which capital ownership is broadly shared among members of its work force.

A questionnaire was administered with a sample of 123 people from a Mondragon cooperative firm, ULMA Architectural Solutions, and responses were analyzed using principal components’ analysis and regression techniques.

Two factors are found to play especially important roles in explaining perceptions: (1) work and management/supervisory practices, especially those relating to communication and participation in decisions in respondents’ immediate work area, and (2) job type (blue collar vs. white collar).

The study confirms earlier research on the broad centrality of participation and related practices to perceptions of work and the organization in employee ownership settings, while findings focus on the immediate work environment and relationships with immediate managers for blue-collar workers.

These are closely related to the research implications, underlining the importance to worker-owners, in manufacturing contexts, of communication and involvement in decisions in their immediate work environment.

Widespread concerns about inequality, poor working conditions, and competitiveness suggest the importance of investigating enterprises with broadly shared capital ownership, enterprises that tend to address these concerns.

The chapter reinforces the fundamental roles of information-sharing and participation in enterprises with shared ownership, while making key distinctions between shopfloor and office workers experiences and perceptions.

To examine how different types of ownership, including investor-owned, employee-owned, and mixed models, affect the dynamics of participatory practices in the workplace, and the broader social effects of these differences.

Brings together literature from democratic theory and empirical research in workplace participation and employee ownership. The first step is to articulate the range of democratic practices from nondemocratic to strongly democratic. The essay then discusses the different forms that participation can take and the threshold for what can be considered democratic participation. It then considers different models of ownership and the impact of ownership type on participatory practices.

It is found that investor-owned firms cannot be considered strongly democratic and that worker cooperatives are more likely to be strongly democratic and cannot fall below the threshold of weak democracy. However, strong democracy is not necessarily a feature of worker cooperatives.

Little work has been done to consider the way the type of ownership affects the kind or degree of democratic practices that may be present in an enterprise.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.

This systematic literature review analyses the determinants and consequences of executive compensation-related shareholder activism and say-on-pay (SOP) votes. The review covers 71 empirical articles published between January 1995 and September 2017. The studies are reviewed within an empirical research framework that separates the reasons for shareholder activism and SOP voting dissent as input factor on the one hand and the consequences of shareholder pressure as output factor on the other. This procedure identifies the five most important groups of factors in the literature: the level and structure of executive compensation, firm characteristics, corporate governance mechanisms, shareholder structure and stakeholders. Of these, executive compensation and firm characteristics are the most frequently examined. Further examination reveals that the key assumptions of neoclassical principal agent theory for both managers and shareholders are not always consistent with recent empirical evidence. First, behavioral aspects (such as the perception of fairness) influence compensation activism and SOP votes. Second, non-financial interests significantly moderate shareholder activism. Insofar, we recommend integrating behavioral and non-financial aspects into the existing research. The implications are analyzed, and new directions for further research are discussed by proposing 19 different research questions.

Mental health is an underdeveloped service to the population generally and to African-Caribbean in particular. There is a need for more sensitive diagnosing, treatment and care. African-Caribbean people are asking for a more culturally competent mental healthcare system.

This chapter aims to address the following issues: how African-Caribbean people reflect on mental health and mental ill health. Their reflections are drawn from interviews done with African-Caribbean people who are involved with Hagar, a mental health charity in Lewisham, London. Mental health and mental illnesses will be examined, followed by the Psychiatrists’ use of the diagnostic tools that do a disservice to Black people. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade and its contribution to the mental ill health of Black people will be addressed, thus providing a historical underpinning for much of Black people’s struggle with mental ill health. Racism and its contribution to mental health issues will be presented. The views of the Black Psychiatrist Franz Fanon will be argued as a way of understanding oppression, alienation and mental ill health in Black people, and going on to open up ways of providing treatment and care. Finally suggestions will be made about how to provide a culturally competent mental health service to African Heritage peoples.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

Following critiques of shareholder capitalism and calls for reform of the corporation, employee-owned firms have attracted public and government attention in the UK and elsewhere, based on the view that these alternative organizations serve a broader public purpose. However, despite attempts to broaden the measures for evaluating organizations and take seriously the social effects of business decisions, we lack a holistic framework for evaluating this public purpose that addresses aspirations like participation, democracy, equality, solidarity, and strong community relations alongside financial resilience and profitability. This study proposes that a solution can be found in Selznick’s concept of “moral community.” Selznick argued that community, conceived as a response to the perceived unravelling of the social fabric, plays a vital role in countering the excesses of capitalism. Using this as a yardstick to evaluate employee ownership (EO) in the UK, the author argues that the EO organizational field is indeed an embodiment of a moral community. It successfully infuses a broad range of social values into economic pursuits, nurtures an inclusive sense of the “common good,” and mitigates the alienation resulting from an increasingly marketized society. At the same time, the EO moral community does not reject capitalism as such, aspiring to connect with and reform existing political, financial, and legal structures as opposed to positioning its own institutions as an alternative to them. There are, therefore, limits to the challenge that the EO community levels against the current socioeconomic order.

This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which is characterized by worker control without ownership, and the United States, which is marked by worker ownership without control. Section three explores three pathways through which broad-based worker ownership and control might be deepened and more strongly coupled in the future.