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I ski about 30 to 40 days each winter. Some of these days are spent at ski areas owned by large conglomerates like American Ski Company or Intrawest. Others are spent at ski areas that are owned by the State of New York. But on a few special days each winter, I take the opportunity to ski Mad River Glen, in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
 Why are my days at Mad River special? Because, as a member of the Mad River Glen Cooperative, I’m not just a skier there. I’m an owner.
As an owner, my relationship with Mad River Glen is different than the relationships I have with other ski areas I visit. I take an interest in how the ski area is run, and in whether its customers are enjoying themselves. Occasionally, I’ll make a suggestion for how something might be done better. At times, I even volunteer some of my time to help out in one capacity or another. I feel that I am a part of Mad River Glen in a way that I’m not at any other ski area I visit. And I believe my relationship with Mad River Glen can give us an insight into life in the Quantum Age.
One of the fundamental facts of the quantum world is that everything is shaped by relationship. Everything that happens is the result of an interaction between something and something else. This is very different from the reductivist approach of classical science, in which attention is focused on isolated entities, cut off from the world in which they exist.
In the quantum world, it is not the subject or the object, but the relationship between them that shapes outcomes. And the nature of that relationship becomes very important.
There is a saying “No one washes a rental car.” If I own a car, I feel connected to it in a way that I’m not connected to other cars on the road. Not only do I want to take care of my car because this will save me money and trouble in the long run. But I also take care of it because of this connectedness; because the car, in a sense, reflects on me. However, I do not feel the same way about a rental car. A rental car is basically a mode of transportation to get me from point A to point B. If it’s dirty, or if it doesn’t run properly, I will feel that condition reflects poorly on the company that rented it to me. After all, I am not responsible for their car.
In this case it is not the nature of the subject (the driver) or the object (the car) that affects the outcome (a well-maintained car). Instead, it is the relationship between the subject and object (ownership, or non-ownership) that shapes the outcome.
Clearly, awareness of this power of relationships has great significance in many areas of our life. But for the moment, I’d like to apply it to an area that deeply affects us all: work.
For much of the 20th century, our world has seen the clash of two basic economic systems: capitalism and communism. With the failure of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, many have proclaimed capitalism “victorious.” However, it seems the fruits of this victory are not being savored by many living and working in the world today. Instead, people feel insecure about their jobs, squeezed by stagnant wages, and alienated from their employers.
At the heart of the capitalist argument against communism has been the matter of ownership. There is no way, so the argument would go, that people would have the same level of motivation and initiative working in a business owned and controlled by the state as they would working in a business they own and control themselves. But the irony of this argument is that it could be made with equal persuasiveness against traditional capitalism itself. Why would people be any more motivated to work for a stockholder-owned and controlled business than one run by the state? If the premium is placed on ownership and control, the end result for the average worker is the same: in either a communist or a traditional capitalist enterprise, the worker is estranged from his or her work. And the result, in either case, is basically the same: lower productivity and poor quality.
But if neither communism nor traditional capitalism have offered a satisfactory solution to worker alienation, what should we do? Maybe we should look at the relationship between the employer and the employee.
When you think about it, many employers seem to view their employees as if they were rental cars. They don’t feel any personal connection or responsibility to their employees, often viewing them instead as a regrettably necessary drain on company resources. If business is off or profits are down, these employers are likely to blame labor costs and incompetent and/or unproductive workers as the source of the problem. And just as part of the value of a rental car is its disposability, such employers seem to feel the solution to many of their problems is to dispose of workers through layoffs.
Ironically, many employees seem to have similar feelings about their jobs and their employers. They don’t feel personally connected to their work, and they don’t feel the success or failure of their employers reflects on them personally. If things go poorly for a company, it’s blamed on poor decisions or incompetence in management. It’s not the employees’ fault. After all, it’s the employer’s company.
A common thread that runs through both of these perspectives is a sense of detachment from the matters at hand. In both cases, there is a disconnectedness that reflects the subject/object schism that is a hallmark of classical science. And while it may not be widely recognized now, as we move into the quantum age this disconnectedness will increasingly be viewed as a major handicap to business performance.
I believe businesses that recognize this will turn to a new kind of relationship between employer and employed, one in which each has a stake in the success of the other. These business will share two fundamental qualities: they will be owned by the employees, and they will be participatively managed.
These two qualities establish a connection between the worker and the company that does not exist in most companies today. In such a business, workers have both a financial and a personal interest in the success of the company. If things go poorly for the company, the employees lose money. It also reflects poorly on them, as they participated in the decisions that led to that poor performance. At the same time, management recognizes its connection to the workers. Not only are the workers integral to the performance of the company, but they are the owners to whom management must ultimately report. Thus, each side is beholden to the other, and each has a vested interest in the success of their common enterprise.
Studies have shown that businesses like these experience substantial gains in performance. One study, by the National Center for Employee Ownership, found that companies with both employee stock ownership plans and participative management “...grew 8% to 11% faster than they would have been expected to grow.” Another study, by the U.S. General Accounting Office, found that “... participatively managed employee ownership firms increased their productivity growth rate by 52% per year” in comparison to other companies.
It looks like the capitalist argument against communism was right. People do have a higher level of motivation and initiative working in a business they own and control themselves. All that has been needed is for capitalism to practice what it preached.
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For more information on employee ownership, visit the home page for The National Center for Employee Ownership.
The performance figures listed above are from the NCEO’s page "Employee Ownership and Corporate Performance".
For an example of an employee-owned company, visit the Science Applications International Corporation.
© Dave Higgins, September 1997. All rights reserved.
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