The history of the mutual/building societies is interesting - customer owned financial institutions. The stock market offered them a huge amount of money to sell up in the 90s, which almost all of the customers took (after all, free money). Then 2008 hit and a lot of them had to be bailed out by taxpayer loans.
EDIT: In the UK, the most prominent retail workers coop of sorts is the John Lewis Partnership. It has more employees than Co-op, at ~80k (in addition to John Lewis and Peter Jones it owns Waitrose), and it could be argued that in some senses it may not strictly be a workers coop - it's owned by a trust for the benefit of the workers of the business so its employees does not have the same direct say in the operation as a pure workers coop - but the terms of the trust makes it somewhat close.
Sure, I believe that. Do they do it enough though? Co-operatives were big in 19th century Britain; now they make up a small part of the market for most things. In particular the Co-op supermarket, though it's cute, is now small (6% market share).
> A single worker doesn't move the statistical needle in a very large corporation? For one, the same fallacy comes up with voting. Secondly: This notion that people are rational robots who only optimize their profits and then also calculate the statistical impact of every of their actions is not just too theoretical, it's just wrong. Loyalty, trust and engagement are things you earn and maintain. A generous compensation (including stocks) can be a part of that.
It's really true that your vote won't decide the next election! I'm sorry :-)
You're right that generous compensation can maintain loyalty and I agree people aren't robots. But for that to save the argument you need more - stocks have to be better at maintaining loyalty than just straightforward pay. Is that true? Maybe: stocks are a "stake" in the company. Is it so true that many companies could improve efficiency by paying in stocks not cash? I'll believe it when I see evidence. Is it so true that we should force companies to do it? I find it highly unlikely and the evidence is clearly inadequate.
>An additional approach is to decentralize and enable partial ownership of franchises. Now suddenly the needle can be moved, day by day and year by year.
Sounds like McDonalds is your ideal of corporate structure :-) Maybe! It's certainly successful.