Buying Your Job: Factors Affecting the Success or Failure of Employee Acquisition Attempts

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Abstract
Until recently, North American producers' cooperatives (employee-owned firms) have received scant attention relative to their more numerous European counterparts. While the existing literature on this subject has covered historical description as well as the critical issues of the emergence, political basis, operation, and success of producers' cooperatives, there is considerable disagreement on the circumstances under which some form of worker ownership emerges and little information available on the factors which make worker ownership possible. This paper identifies a number of variables important to the successful acquisition by workers of their own firm and delineates the functions of each variable as a contributor to success. The paper is based on a study of six firms in which the complex process of transferring the ownership of an enterprise to its employees has been attempted.