Comments on: Employee ownership as partial emergent order – insights from Hayek

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:36:00 +0000

Good luck with your new venture, Michael. On the subject of tuning your company’s offering, you might enjoy an older post on the role of experimentation: http://greatnotbig.com/2011/11/its-not-a-mistake-just-a-failed-experiment/

By: Michael Moores

Michael Moores — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:05:00 +0000

Thanks Carl for the great insight. I just recently started a company and I struggle with two competing goals; painting a vision for the company (made order concept) while enabling and empowering people to make decisions and take leadership roles (emergent order). You have articulated my challenge well, I look forward to finding my own ‘mule’ hybrid.

By: Adventures in company ownership | Great Not Big

Adventures in company ownership | Great Not Big — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:26:42 +0000

[...] | December 26, 2012 It was about a year ago that I described employee ownership of a company as a “partial emergent order”. An emergent order is a system that arises between the interactions of many independent components [...]

By: Mining our passions for the "why" | Atomic Spin

Mining our passions for the "why" | Atomic Spin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:25:53 +0000

[...] firm and how that affects how we define ourselves. And then I got distracted by posts about employee ownership, improving P&L statements, transparency, and a whole host of material that Carl has [...]

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:43:00 +0000

Great contribution to the discussion. The un-coerced, freewill participation is no doubt a critical factor in making the magic happen. Thanks, David.

Oh, and Acton Institute is actually a customer of my firm, Atomic Object. Great people, cool mission.

By: David Hodge

David Hodge — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:17:00 +0000

I am sorry to be late to this article, because I have found it so interesting. Thanks Carl for the tip on EconTalk. Regarding the morality of social order, you might be interested in Grand Rapids’s own Acton Institute (acton.org). It seems to me that the morality is not in the emergent order itself, but in ensuring the freedom to participate (or not participate) in emergent order. There can be no guarantee of a positive outcome, but this reminds me of the old writings about Providence around the founding of the U.S.

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:26:00 +0000

Thanks for the tip, Dave. I bought several of their books as part of my education a few years ago. Good stuff.

By: Dave Meekhof

Dave Meekhof — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Hi Karl,
You may have already looked into the ESOP Association, if not check it out:
http://www.esopassociation.org/
http://www.esop.org/

-Dave

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:01:00 +0000

I read this story in the paper copy of HBR that I receive just before SCNA, Scott. Truly an amazing structure, and evidently quite effective. Makes most everything else I’ve considered or read about seem downright tame and conventional by comparison.

Someone just suggested a book to me, “Maverick” by Recardo Semler, on how Semco is organized. Haven’t read it yet, but it is similarly radical in it’s practices.

By: Scott Parker

Scott Parker — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:46:00 +0000

Carl:

Forgive my lateness in responding, but I have been getting caught up on your blog after you mentioned it at SCNA (awesome talk, by the way).

I’m curious if you’re pursuing the idea of emerging orders in other ways as well. I’m thinking specifically of Harvard Business Review’s recent story on the tomato processor Morning Star (http://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/10) where they largely self-organize based on commitments each employee makes to others within the business.
Very interesting stuff. Regardless, I look forward to hearing how this next experiment turns out.-Scott