To think more companies should be a ‘partnership’ like John Lewis?

[Sunshineintherainallnight]

I just think it's a better business model as it doesn't line the pockets of shareholders. It just feels more ethical to be honest.

My friend works there.
She said it used to feel like a partnership but doesn't now.
She said its not the job it used to be. Says she stays for the staff discount!

It’s not a better business model. John Lewis is widely expected by the city to announce a loss in it’s financial results tomorrow.

Under the previous CEO who believed in the partnership and maintained 125 year vision statement happier partners = happier customers. New CEO wiffle waffle for vision statement partners loose direction all falls a part.

A public company would not have been able or permitted to appoint the same person, completely inexperienced in the retail industry, as both CEO and Chairman.

The current ‘management’ now have virtually no one with retail experience, unless you count Post Office Counters ( that went well) and British Gas as retailers.

a shareholder structure might have been able to prevent some of the now inevitable decline, although times are hard for department stores across the board.

I work for a much smaller employee-owned company, and it is a fantastic model, in my experience. It feels too good to be true sometimes, tbh.

The principle is that the only people who take profit from the company are the people who earn it. It really feels like we are all pulling together, to do interesting work we enjoy.

We used to have a lot of "mutual" companies, such as insurance firms, building societies etc., that were "owned" by their customers.

Trouble was that their "customers" got greedy and voted to "demutualise" meaning selling their "shares" to external shareholders and financial institutions for a whopping profit. Now, there are very few "mutuals"!

Same with utilities and "tell sid", whereby the general public were given the option to buy shares in our utilities to broaden individual share ownership, which they did in great numbers, and then promptly sold them to financial institutions for a whopping profit!

As we've seen with the Co-Op, being a mutual isn't always better as it was nearly brought down by bad management/leadership a few years ago.

In theory, "mutuals" and "partnerships" seem a good idea, but in reality, the stakeholders get greedy and incompetent management is still an issue (and they're more difficult to get rid of when no one actually owns enough of the company to force a change in management!).

If we had kept mutuals (building societies especially) in more numbers, the impact of the financial crisis would have been a lot less.

Not every business consistently makes profits, not all businesses can get loans, not all businesses have large amounts of cash or other liquid assets to help through the bad times. I doubt that many "partners" would want to work for a business where they may have to contribute cash to help the business survive. Employee partnerships can be very limiting for starting business and growing businesses. The concept of shareholder companies has been around for a long time for a very good reason.