Promoting Social Cohesion Through Innovative Human Resource Practice: The Carris Community of Companies

This paper traces the evolution of how one sole entrepreneur owner of a corporation promoted social cohesion through his determination to sell his company to his employees at below market price, while engaging in an extensive training and employee empowerment program so that the new owner-employees can effectively manage the business, while also being good corporate citizens in society at the local and global levels. These missions are accomplished through an employee corporate committee which receives and distributes grants taken from corporate profits to worthy local charitable institutions as well as the Full Circle Program where employees are granted travel-learning sabbaticals to developing nations to perform service work for those communities.