Congratulations to Joseph Blasi

Dr. Joseph Blasi, one of the driving forces of academic interest and research on employee ownership, has stepped down from his role as the director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University. He will continue his work as both a researcher and mentor at the university's School of Management and Labor Relations.

Starting in 2007, the institute grew during Dr. Blasi's tenure from a fairly standard university fellowship program into a full-fledged institute with more than 200 global research fellows. It offers online and in-person courses, hosts and co-hosts multiple major annual conferences, and conducts policy analysis at both the federal and state levels. The institute has also become the home of a wide variety of programs that are now an important part of the employee ownership resource and information ecosystem, including the Shares Laboratory, the Curriculum Library for Employee Ownership, the University Consortium, the Applied Research Lab, and the NJ/NY Center for Employee Ownership.

Throughout his time as director, Dr. Blasi has stayed at the forefront of employee ownership research and advocacy and worked to raise the profile of employee ownership in the national dialogue, most notably through his book The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century (2014), co-authored with Richard Freeman and Douglas Kruse. A selection of his over 150 publications includes The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business (2019), Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-Based Stock Options (2011), In The Company of Owners (2003), The New Owners: The Mass Emergence of Employee Ownership in Public Companies and What It Means to American Business (1991), and Employee Ownership: Revolution or Ripoff (1988). His work has been cited nearly 8,000 times in academic publications.

Dr. Blasi has had a tremendous impact on the field of employee ownership and on many of us at the NCEO. NCEO founder Corey Rosen reminisced on their relationship: 

I met Joseph in 1978 when we were both Congressional staffers working on employee ownership (Joseph was at Harvard but came down one week a month). Over these last 47 years, Joseph became the leading academic researcher on employee ownership. But more than that, he almost single-handedly conceived and created the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, which provides annual fellowships to academic researchers in the field and holds semi-annual conferences of scholars and practitioners. It has been a monumental effort that really paid off. It has been an honor to have him as a dear friend and great colleague.

NCEO executive director Loren Rodgers remarked on Dr. Blasi's impact on the field:

Joseph is a towering figure in the employee ownership world. He is a rare individual who excels in multiple areas—policy, institution building, field development, and academia. Even within academia, Joseph draws seamlessly from high-N statistics, history, and deep qualitative analysis. His transition from his role as the director of the Rutgers Institute for Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, a role he created, is a milestone for the entire field of employee ownership. I and everyone who works to promote employee ownership owe Joseph a debt of gratitude for his many accomplishments, the careers he supported, and the strong foundations he created, but most importantly, millions of employee-owners in the US and abroad have better lives because of Joseph.

We in the employee ownership community are better for Dr. Blasi's involvement, support, encouragement, and contributions. We at the NCEO wish to congratulate him on his time with the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing.