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APOIDEA ERP
Apoidea Cooperative Management Suite
Enterprise Resource Planning for Strategic Union Cooperatives
In most western nations, democratic ideals are heavily ingrained in public life, yet don't seem to apply to the very places where we spend a huge portion of our lives: our workplaces. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you could vote on who leads your company? Perhaps you are the very person who should be in charge of some part of the operation, but entrenched management makes it very difficult to achieve such a goal. Perhaps we need to stop thinking about corporate management as a means to attain power and rather reframe it as a job that is undertaken on behalf of your fellow workers. How would we achieve this shift in thinking? Internal elections.
~About Apoidea~
This software is intended to implement democratic workplace management in a self-contained Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suite specifically for companies which meet the definition of a Strategic Union. A Strategic Union is a democratically run worker's cooperative which operates on a system of social equity protections and structurally reinforced meritocracy called Hierarchy by Consent.
There are two main features:
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1. The first feature is strict equity controls including a limit of 1000 shares per person (collectively called an EOS), the banning of speculation, and the banning of the sale of stock to non-contributing entities or non-persons. This is designed to resist oligarchical hostile takeovers.
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2. The second key feature is the election of a President to lead the General Conference and maintain social equity, as well as a Chief Executive Officer to implement a business plan through an operational management hierarchy in order to generate revenue for the company. This split is reinforced by opposing incentive bonuses with the President receiving a set percentage of the total payroll and the CEO receiving a set percentage of the business income their project generates. This should result in a back-and-forth cycle of growth vs equity realignment, keeping the company stable in the long-term.
To start a Strategic Union, a technically inclined individual would need to set up a server running the software and invite like-minded associates to join. This is called the "club phase" and allows the group to collaborate and plan business objectives privately.
Without investor capital, however, a startup Strategic Union needs an alternative method of capitalization. During the "club phase," the group will need to pay a small amount of dues periodically to operate the server and cover legal expenses. Once they incorporate, however, they will be able to negotiate labor contracts with other businesses to generate revenue for the business plan. The co-op temporarily acts like a hiring agency, with its bargaining power determined by its size and specialization. The worker gets a paycheck and the margin goes toward capitalization of the business plan, a win/win.
The startup sequence for these cooperatives is therefore:
Server Setup → Recruitment → Elections → Dues → → → Business Plan Implementation
Project Status
Version 0.2.0-alpha
The project is currently in the alpha phase of development. Many web pages may be incomplete at this time, but content will be added as it is developed. If you happen to be a developer, please consider contibuting! Check out the template page for an introduction, and be sure to contact us if you have any questions.
Hierarchy by Consent
Equal Ownership Shares
What is a share, and why do we want them? A share is a unit used in business to measure a person or legal entity's ownership stake in a particular enterprise. The amount of shares someone owns determines how much voting power they have within the company, as well as how much of the dividends they receive. In many businesses, already-wealthy individuals are able to buy up a large portion of the shares of a company and use that ownership to take unilateral control of the business. In other instances, control is shared with a board of powerful shareholders. This setup is a guaranteed internal dictatorship or oligarchy, with workers and lower-level management unable to force any meaningful change on the workplace, regardless whether it is needed.
Instead, the Strategic Union model proposes a specific set of equity controls that define the Equal Ownership Share, or EOS. An EOS is made up of 1000 shares of common stock of a Strategic Union cooperative incorporated as a C-corporation in the United States. This will be the defined limit for stock ownership for any individual with a labor-interest in the company. The Apoidea software will report the worker's ownership stake as a percentage of a full EOS. For example, 875 shares of common stock is equal to 87.5% of an EOS.
EOS's can only be sold to the company's workers and they are non-transferrable, meaning they can only be sold back to the company. They are also fixed at book value, meaning they are tied to the actual tangible asset valuation of the company, not speculation or forecasts. When a worker leaves the company for any reason, their stock gets bought back immediately, preventing "ghost workers" from receiving dividends without contributing labor. These restrictions are designed to guarantee the financial stability and well-being of the company, and to resist hostile oligarchical takeovers.
Workers will be awarded their EOS incrementally over time as part of their compensation package. This allows new workers to join without having to worry about an expensive on-boarding fee or share purchase. Their voice in the company will grow over the "provisional period" while their EOS increases from 0 to 100%. At the end of the provisional period, they will have their full EOS and full voting rights in the company.
So, what is an EOS and why do we want it? An EOS is a symbol of equity and democracy. These symbols that define our public life can and should come to define our work lives, as well.