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By SU Public Relations

SALISBURY, MD---“Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world,” wrote Pope Francis in his encyclical letter “Laudato Si” (“Praise Be”).

“It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.”

Those were the words that inspired Rodrigo Zuloaga and Gonzalo Hernandez, faculty at ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, in Mexico, to develop the recently released book Employee Ownership in the Americas: A Path to Shared Prosperity. Their goal: Help people in Central and South America improve their economic and social circumstances based on employee ownership with a high-engagement culture.

To do so, they sought out some of the world’s foremost employee ownership experts, from Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, France, Spain and the U.S., including Dr. Frank Shipper, professor emeritus of management in ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥’s Franklin P. Perdue School of Business.

With William Nobles, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations executive fellow and former corporate vice president of information systems at ExxonMobil Corp., Shipper co-authored the chapter “Practices of Freedom-Based Employee Ownership Enterprises, Their Employees and Leaders.”

Citing Mondragon Corp., a federation of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, as an example of employee ownership from outside the Americas, they share insights from their 60-plus combined years of experience and research into the topic. The authors touch on the leadership, culture, recruitment and selection, training and development, succession planning and leadership development, risk-taking, learning, open communications, shared property and company resource rights, and layoff avoidance strategies that have helped such companies and their employees attain prosperity.

Shipper’s research also has been presented at many venues, for example the Beyster Symposiums at the University of California, San Diego; the  Saïd Business School’s Business Fights Poverty Conferences and the Kellogg College’s Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership Research Symposium both at the University of Oxford;; the International Rendanheyi Model Forum in Qingdao, China; the Mid-Year Fellows Workshop in Honor of Louis O. Kelso at Rutgers University; and  Academy of Management’s annual meetings.

His studies also have been referenced by national media, including MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal, and featured in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations’ Curriculum Library for Employee Ownership, the largest global online library on employee ownership, among other notable outlets. For over 30 years, his colleagues and he have promoted effective inclusion, diversity and equity practices through their teaching and dissemination internationally of their research.  

Last year, he was awarded Rutgers University’s William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King White Book Prize for the book Shared Entrepreneurship: A Path to Engaged Employee Ownership, for which he served as editor and co-author.

Employee Ownership in the Americas: A Path to Shared Prosperity is available as a free download from . Hard copies of the book are expected to be released at a later date.

Learn more about SU and opportunities to Make Tomorrow Yours at the SU website.