Shared Capitalism through Employee Ownership Award

 

Natascha van der Zwan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Natascha’s work investigates how labor unions in the United States have responded to the rise of financial capitalism since the late 1970s by using employee ownership and shareholder activism to challenge the pursuit of shareholder value maximization at the expense of jobs, wages and benefits. Her dissertation shows how labor unions have not completely rejected financial capitalism, but rather renegotiated its shareholder value logic with business actors through these financial strategies. She compares her research results from the United States with a case study of Germany to analyze to what extent institutional and cultural contexts have shaped labor union responses to this broad historical shift from industrial to financial capitalism. Her work not only has implications for our understanding of labor politics in these two countries, but also raises broader questions regarding the distribution of ownership and control in the modern corporation.

 

You can view Natascha van der Zwan's CV here.

 

* The 2010-2011 Shared Capitalism through Employee Ownership Research Award

was co-sponsored by The Foundation for Enterprise Development and the Employee Ownership Foundation. For more information on this award, please click here.