The Gain Was Always Shared · Chapter Twelve

The Gain Was Always Shared

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

Chapter Twelve of The Gain Was Always Shared: Gainsharing from the Scanlon Mill to the Kitchen Table.

Abstract

Every improvement in a working organisation has already been paid for once, before anyone designs a reward for it. It was paid for by the person who noticed the sealing jaw drifting after four hours, the nurse who saw that the handover form lost the one line that mattered, the clerk who realised that a report three departments produced was read by none of them. They paid in attention, usually unasked, often on their own time, and in most firms the payment was never recorded. The question gainsharing asks is not whether to share the gain. The gain is already shared, in the sense that it was produced by many people. The question is whether the firm will acknowledge that, in money and in structure, or whether it will continue to book the result as management's and the knowledge as free.

Read the PDFRead the whole bookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989521

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). The Gain Was Always Shared. In The Gain Was Always Shared. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989521

@incollection{santaanna2026the12,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {The Gain Was Always Shared},
  booktitle = {The Gain Was Always Shared},
  chapter   = {12},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989521},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-gain-was-always-shared/12-the-gain-was-always-shared/}
}

References

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  3. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763
  4. Kim, D.-O. (1999). Determinants of the survival of gainsharing programs. ILR Review, 53(1), 21–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979399905300102
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  6. Schuster, M. (1984). The Scanlon Plan: A longitudinal analysis. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 20(1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/002188638402000107

Every chapter of The Gain Was Always Shared

  1. Chapter OneWho Holds What a Firm Learnsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989505
  2. Chapter TwoThe Mill That Asked Firstdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989508
  3. Chapter ThreeWhere the Gain Goes Missingdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989509
  4. Chapter FourA Firm Has a Circulationdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989510
  5. Chapter FiveTwenty-One Defects in a Thousanddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989511
  6. Chapter SixTalk Is the First Returndoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989514
  7. Chapter SevenPromises, Prices and the Operating Roomdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989515
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989517
  9. Chapter NineHow to Know It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989518
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989519
  11. Chapter ElevenOne Person's Gaindoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989520
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Gain Was Always Shareddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989521
  13. AppendixThe Workbookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989522

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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.