Owning the Work · Chapter Two

A Share in the Place

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Two of Owning the Work: Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and What the Evidence Shows.

Abstract

In 1956 a San Francisco lawyer named Louis Kelso was asked to solve a small problem. The two founders of Peninsula Newspapers, a closely held group of papers south of San Francisco, were in their eighties and wanted to retire, and the people who could best keep the papers running were the people already putting them out. Those employees had no capital. Kelso's answer was a trust that borrowed the money, bought the shares on the employees' behalf, and repaid the loan from the company's earnings. The arrangement became the employee stock ownership plan, and when Kelso died in 1991 the New York Times remembered him as the advocate of what it called worker-capitalism. That is the story usually told, and it is true as far as it goes. It is also too short. Kelso built a financial device. The idea the device carried is much older, and it is worth getting the order right, because the order changes what a leader thinks they are adopting.

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). A Share in the Place. In Owning the Work. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989566

@incollection{santaanna2026owning2,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {A Share in the Place},
  booktitle = {Owning the Work},
  chapter   = {2},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989566},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/owning-the-work/02-a-share-in-the-place/}
}

References

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Every chapter of Owning the Work

  1. Chapter OneWho Holds a Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989565
  2. Chapter TwoA Share in the Placedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989566
  3. Chapter ThreeEvery Egg, One Basketdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989567
  4. Chapter FourThreats From, Threats Todoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989568
  5. Chapter FiveA Bakery's Arithmeticdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989569
  6. Chapter SixFour Houses That Kept Their Purposedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989570
  7. Chapter SevenTwo Beginnings in 1956doi:10.5281/zenodo.23989571
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989572
  9. Chapter NineKnowing Whether It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989573
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989574
  11. Chapter ElevenOne Person's Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989576
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Roots Under the Standdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989014
  13. Chapter ThirteenWhat Moves Between the Rootsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989016
  14. The WorkbookEvery Tool, and Ninety Daysdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989020

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.