“History shows us that employee ownership schemes – often in combination with a family firm business model – can generate real and lasting commitment to local communities and economies. Such apparently antiquated forms of business ownership are clearly far from being barriers to sustained success. Another excellent example from the North-west region, alongside the Co-operative movement, is the Booths supermarket chain, a fifth generation family firm that has offered employee bonus and share schemes since the early twentieth-century.”
Andrew Popp, Reader in Business History, University of Liverpool Management School
“The long-term success of businesses such as John Lewis and the Co-operative Group deserves closer scrutiny as a more consistent form of business that can benefit all stakeholders. While co-operatives have flourished in the UK for over 150 years, they have been marginalised by a political-business elite that has preferred the more volatile form of capitalism that both produces great wealth yet results in massive crashes.
However, the success of the Co-operative Group, which will have been in business for 150 years in 2013, indicates the vigour and dynamism in this ‘Alternative Way'”
Professor John Wilson Professor of Strategy, University of Liverpool Management School