Gijsbert Koren en Nina de Korte pleiten in Toekomstbedrijven voor een fundamentele verandering van de eigendomsstructuur van bedrijven. Hun pleidooi is goed onderbouwd en het alternatief steward-ownership wordt helder uitgewerkt. Deze recensie vat hun boek samen, verdiept op enkele punten en maakt enkele kanttekeningen.
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Closing the loop of products and materials in Product Service Systems (PSS) can be approached by designers in several ways. One promising strategy is to invoke a greater sense of ownership of the products and materials that are used within a PSS. To develop and evaluate a design tool in the context of PSS, our case study focused on a bicycle sharing service. The central question was whether and how designers can be supported with a design tool, based on psychological ownership, to involve users in closing the loop activities. We developed a PSS design tool based on psychological ownership literature and implemented it in a range of design iterations. This resulted in ten design proposals and two implemented design interventions. To evaluate the design tool, 42 project members were interviewed about their design process. The design interventions were evaluated through site visits, an interview with the bicycle repairer responsible, and nine users of the bicycle service. We conclude that a psychological ownership-based design tool shows potential to contribute to closing the resource loop by allowing end users and service provider of PSS to collaborate on repair and maintenance activities. Our evaluation resulted in suggestions for revising the psychological ownership design tool, including adding ‘Giving Feedback’ to the list of affordances, prioritizing ‘Enabling’ and ‘Simplification’ over others and recognize a reciprocal relationship between service provider and service user when closing the loop activities.
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Extending the lifespan of products can be approached in several ways. One promising way is to give users a greater sense of ownership of the products that are used. In the context of Product Service Systems (PSS), products are often used temporarily, shared with others, and offered through a technology-mediated environment. Not much is known about psychological ownership in this context. To evaluate psychological ownership affordances as an intermediate knowledge tool in the context of PSS, we started a case study focused on a bicycle sharing service of The Student Hotel (TSH). The central question was how a design approach, based on psychological ownership, can help to redesign the bicycle-service of TSH to contribute to extended lifespans of the bicycles. This resulted in ten exemplary designs as project outcomes and two implemented design interventions in a TSH branch. All project members and stakeholders (app supplier X-bike and Roetz-bikes mechanics) and students of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (HU) (n=42) were interviewed on process efficiency, process quality and design quality at the end of the collaboration. We performed a qualitative analysis to identify when and how the team members applied the design tool, how these obstructed or supported the design process, and if the team members show shared understanding of the behavioral and/or social consequences of their decisions. The results show both top-down and bottom-up insights, leading to four suggestions for adapting the existing model as an intermediate knowledge tool: (1) being more goal-oriented, (2) consider a hierarchy of affordances, (3) consider to add a new affordance and (4) recognize a more active role of the service provider.
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Hoe bereiden we studenten voor op een economie die niet alleen financiële waarde creëert, maar ook maatschappelijke en ecologische impact heeft? Het Centre for Economic Transformation van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) introduceert steward-ownership - een docentenhandleiding & teaching case.Steward-ownership scheidt economische rechten (winst) van stemrechten (besluitvorming), zodat een onderneming duurzaam kan blijven opereren zonder afhankelijk te zijn van kortetermijnwinsten voor aandeelhouders. Grote bedrijven zoals Patagonia kozen recentelijk voor dit model om hun maatschappelijke missie veilig te stellen. Maar wat betekent dit in de praktijk? En welke alternatieven bestaan er voor traditionele aandeelhouderschapsmodellen?In deze teaching case maken we studenten bewust van de rol die eigenaarschap van ondernemingen speelt in de transitie naar een eerlijke en duurzame economie. We bekijken de traditionele vorm van aandeelhouderschap en ontdekken hoe steward-ownership een alternatief biedt voor winstmaximalisatie voor enkelen ten koste van welzijn en welvaart van velen. Met behoud van ruimte voor ondernemerschap.Deze teaching case biedt een toegankelijke introductie in steward-ownership en is speciaal ontwikkeld voor studenten in het economische en maatschappelijke domein. Docenten kunnen direct aan de slag met:- Een docentenhandleiding met uitleg en lesdoelen.- Een geanimeerde infographic die het concept helder uitlegt.- Zes interactieve werkvormen, waaronder groepsdiscussies, rollenspellen en een pressure cooker.- Een hoofdtekst voor studenten, aangevuld met verdiepende hoofdstukken, afgestemd op hr, sociaal ondernemerschap en juridische vraagstukken.De case past bij uiteenlopende opleidingen in het economisch en maatschappelijk domein van HBO en WO vanaf derde jaar Bachelor t/m Masterniveau. De opgedane kennis is actueel en relevant voor studenten die gaan werken in het bedrijfsleven of zelf gaan ondernemen. Zij herkennen de voor- en nadelen van klassieke vormen van eigenaarschap. Ook zijn ze zich bewust van alternatieve mogelijkheden van eigenaarschap die naadloos aansluiten bij een nieuwe economie.Met deze les bereid je studenten voor op een toekomst in de nieuwe economie, en laat je ze ervaren hoe steward-ownership een deel van de oplossing kan zijn! Je kunt de case kosteloos downloaden en morgen inzetten in je les.
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1e alinea column: Nederland zoekt heel duidelijk politieke en economisch richting. Dat is in ieder geval de indruk die wij krijgen. Willen we ons verdienvermogen de komende jaren op peil houden is het in ieder geval duidelijk dat de koopman terug moet komen, dat we op moeten houden eindeloze rapporten te schrijven en dat we gewoon iets moeten doen.
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The hotel management agreement is a common, but arguably at times misunderstood, hotel operating structure. This study has sought to explore how both owners and hotel management companies (“operators”) perceive aspects of ownership in managed hotels. In-depth interviews were held with both operator and owner executives and it was found that, even though interviewees appeared to be aware of the nature of the relationship established by a hotel management agreement, in practice operators in particular use a working definition of the model that is more akin to a lease. Misunderstandings of the hotel management agreement can cause confusion as to where risks and responsibilities lie. Based on these findings, we argue that ownership of the operating business, in addition to that of the hotel’s real estate, deserves to be more explicitly acknowledged and addressed.
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Many policy makers are unaware of the pitfalls in ownership transfers in SMEs and the inadequate advisory services. This paper presents the economic importance of business transfers, the research evidence to date on the main issues in ownership changes and discusses potential policies to reduce (advisory) failure in business transfers within the EU.The first recommendation is to create affordable one-stop shops for micro firm acquirers and sellers, as in start-up programs. Secondly, it is essential to register ownership transfers properly, using a uniform definition in order to measure its impact on economy, to detect the target group of (potential) firm owners and to evaluate policies and programs efficiently. Thirdly, the advisors involved in firm acquisition and ownership transfer should be stimulated to cooperate with other disciplines and use different and more transparent methods to improve their effectiveness.
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In this article, the preservation of the monumental built environment from the colonial period is related to and discussed within the perspective of heritage ownership. It contributes to a debate in which heritage resource preservation is approached and connected to several heritage ownership issues. It argues that an effective built environmental preservation policy for colonial heritage is strongly related to and dependent on issues such as legal property ownership, legislation on listed buildings, enforcement of such legislation, and the willingness among different categories of potential owners to participate and support such preservation. Especially, when it comes to built colonial heritage as an imported alien resource from a colonial past, these issues are particularly interesting and sensitive. A good illustration of these issues is the case of Paramaribo, Suriname. The national government policy following the inscription of the historic inner city of Paramaribo on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in 2002 clearly demonstrates an area of tension and difficulty between and within the interested parties. It shows that monumental preservation and heritage management and interpretation are strongly affected and determined by concepts such as ownership, affinity, interest, economic priorities, and political will. By referring to the actual problems encountered in the preservation efforts relating to the built colonial heritage in Paramaribo and subsequently explaining these problems in relation to specific ownership issues, this article throws light on a number of dilemmas. Conclusions are drawn widening the argument and contributing to the ongoing debate on heritage ownership issues and monument preservation policies especially as it relates to the global issue of managing the relics of now defunct empires. In recent years an increasing interest can be detected in issues concerning the legal property ownership of heritage. This growth in interest focuses in particular on the legislation in relationship to property ownership issues. An important aim of national governments is to use legislation to safeguard their cultural property by embedding it in law, especially, when this cultural property has a high monetary or identity value (as stressed by Fechner, 1998). Additionally, the growing awareness and recognition of heritage as a valuable economic, sociopsychological and environmental asset is receiving increasing international attention. For example, the international acknowledgment that heritage resources are under pressure from all kinds of processes and impacts has encouraged the need for an extension of international legal measures. Consequently, this international interest, often expressed in conventions, charters, and treaties, encourages national and local initiatives (Techera, 2011). An interesting complication to this issue is the question that arises where it involves the monumental built environment from the colonial period that is being preserved and restored, as it may be viewed as a heritage based on alien resources. In particular the acceptance, recognition, and role of what may be viewed as an imported colonial built environment in a multicultural and multiethnic context, may impact effective legislation. Although the discussion about the roles of heritage within a plural cultural and ethnic society has already begun (recently emphasized by Van Maanen, 2011; Ashworth, Graham, & Tunbridge, 2007), it is still an underresearched topic when it comes to legal property ownership as part of a management strategy for preserving built colonial heritage resources. This article examines in particular the effectiveness of policies and laws pursued in Suriname as an instrument for the preservation of resources. It highlights the legal and administrative challenges facing the implementation, management, and enforcement of these strategies and measures. The first part of this article examines the debate about the approach and strategy in using law in conservation and preservation policies. Then the article proceeds to introduce Suriname as an instructive case study. It describes the existing multiethnic context of Suriname and the evolution of legislative policy for the historic inner city of the capital, Paramaribo, with its monumental built environment from the colonial period. By using field data, the article continues with an analysis of the effectiveness and impacts of this administrative and legal framework established in Suriname. It examines in detail the main problems encountered and the extent to which this strategy is supported by the key stakeholders.
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This article focuses on the development of professional learning communities (PLCs), which are communities within schools, composed of voluntary participating teachers facilitated by school principals with a specific task to accomplish as part of a larger innovation project. Four PLCs were observed during 3 years by using questionnaires and participatory research. The questionnaires revealed that PLCs differed in their group characteristics, collective learning processes and outcomes. Through participatory research, we explored seven elements affecting the development of PLCs, namely, task perceptions, group composition, tensions between roles, beliefs about alignment, reflective dialogues, socialisation and ownership. Beliefs about alignment, ownership and socialisation had sufficient impact on the development of the PLCs. A case study including two contrasting PLCs indicated interrelations between task perceptions and ownership by members and between ownership and socialisation activities. Regarding implications, this research suggests to explicitly create and facilitate reflective dialogues and ownership over time for PLCs to flourish.
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Different types of strategic renewal by the successor are identified: organizational change, innovation, combined actions and no action. The main assumption is that renewal after succession improves SME post-transfer performance compared to no actions taken. Also successor’s timing of the takeover is observed, looking at the economic conditions in the year of ownership transfer: decline, average or growing conditions. The hypotheses are tested on a random stratified sample of 333 Dutch firms. Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) and complementary T-tests show that organizational change, product/market innovation and combined actions all increase post-transfer performance compared to no renewal. Strategic renewal pays off in any economic period, but mostly so in periods of economic decline. The control variable firm size is a significant predictor: the smaller the firm the better the post-transfer performance.
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