In October, our celebration of Small is Beautiful continues with the theme of Rethinking Ownership & Work: Shared Responsibility & Reward. Our participants for this online conversation are introduced below.
Join us Thursday, October 19th at 2PM (EDT). As with all 2023 Schumacher Conversations, registration is free.
Register here.
Small is Beautiful concludes not on the question of scale per se, but rather on the issue of ownership. Lamenting the polarizing dichotomy of public vs. private ownership in modern industrial society, Schumacher assures readers that “Reality, thank God, is more imaginative.” The book explores alternative patterns of shared ownership and worker control as tools for place-based, ecologically responsible, and human-scaled regeneration.
In small-scale enterprise, private ownership is natural, fruitful, and just. In large-scale enterprise, private ownership is a fiction …enabling functionless owners to live parasitically on the labor of others… an irrational element which distorts all relationships within the enterprise…
— E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
When enterprises are owned by the workers themselves, the surplus created by their industry is more fully distributed to these individuals and the larger community that nourished and supported them. What’s more, the cooperative model carries the potential to transform social relationships, cultivating shared accountability and cooperative deliberation. Many examples provide proof that worker-ownership is not only a means of redistributing wealth and power, but of repairing the alienation and lack of agency fostered by the old economic paradigm.
October’s panelists are those advancing forms of worker-ownership, proven models which empower employees while broadening the benefits of ownership.
October Panelists
- John Abrams is a principal with Abrams + Angell, a consulting practice focused on triple-bottom-line business. He is co-founder and President Emeritus of South Mountain Company, an employee-owned design and build firm granted a National Award for Workplace Democracy by Business Ethics Magazine in 2005.
- Julian McKinley is Co-Executive Director at Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), a national organization dedicated to building the field of worker cooperative development through research, education and relationship-building. Julian has led the organization’s communications and data programs since joining in 2019.
- Beth Spong brings a lifetime of entrepreneurship, mission-driven consulting, and nonprofit leadership to Dean’s Beans, a fair trade coffee company in Orange, MA. As of this year, the business is transitioning into a worker-owned cooperative with Beth as C.E.O.
- Alice Maggio is a Senior Project Officer for the Working World, a New York City non-profit that helps build cooperative businesses in low-income communities. Alice previously worked at the Schumacher Center and currently serves on the Board of Directors.
Each panelist is invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful that connect with their own thinking and activism. These reflections then open up a broader conversation on the topic of worker-ownership. An audience Q&A will follow, moderated by our host, Alice Maggio.