Promotional Information

A business book for our times - employee business ownership is the key to success in the post-credit-crunch world.

About the Author

In a varied life, David Erdal won a scholarship to Oxford University; was elected as a trade union shop-steward; became for a time a professional communist organiser; worked in Mao's China; became disillusioned with totalitarian systems; distinguished himself at Harvard Business School; led one of Britain's most successful paper manufacturers and moved them into all-employee ownership; and advised companies, trade unions and governments in Slovenia, Zimbabwe, China and South Africa on privatising companies into ownership by all their employees. He gained a PhD in the psychology of sharing from St Andrews University in 2000. He is a director of a partnership that helps companies achieve all-employee buyouts, chairman of the Employee Ownership Trust and chairman of the employee ownership trust of a successful childcare company.

Reviews

This is by far the best book to explain democratic employee ownership to business people and to the owners of family firms who might be considering a sale to the employees. David Erdal has "walked the walk" by arranging for the successful sale of his large family business to the employees so he speaks with a convincing authority on the matter. He masterfully spells out the arguments on economic, managerial, political, and social psychological grounds for democratic worker ownership. This combination of real world experience and interdisciplinary understanding of the issues makes this the book on democratic employee ownership.
*David Ellerman*

This is a significant piece of work and I expect it to play an important part in creating a different ownership landscape in the years to come.
*Jim Mather, Minister for Enterprise, Energy & Tourism: The Scottish Parliament*

Already looks like being one of the most influential business books of the year
*Scotsman*

BEYOND THE CORPORATION gives a breathtaking overview of employee ownership over the years and across the continents and provides a passionate argument of the case for employee ownership. It should be compulsory reading, not just for those of us on the inside, but for any student of economics, sociology, business or politics.
*Carole Leslie, Policy Director, Employee Ownership Association*

Erdal convincingly exposes the gross errors in the conventional models economists use to describe people and businesses (which he labels 'just-so stories'), and describes how and why employee-owned businesses are superior to publicly listed companies in every way. The book is an easy read, jam-packed with quotable passages.
*Bella Caledonia Blog*