From what I've read, Semco employees help set their own compensation and hours, something that will not be happening at Zappos (at least not in such a direct fashion). Semco is a workplace democracy, not a holacracy. It isn't a worker cooperative (like certain MONDRAGON group members), so there isn't shared ownership, so it has that in common with Zappos.
In a nutshell, the holacracy system will have "circles" of individuals which act as semi-autonomous groups to achieve results. Each circle might function democratically. Semco is a more traditional company with a workplace democracy overlay on top. This piece goes into more detail: http://jonathangifford.com/maverick-ricardo-semler-10-key-de...
EDIT: And oh yeah, both Zappos and Semco are privately held. The linked article discusses this in the comments, but in recent years we've had more illustrative examples of how profit incentive sucks character and morals from a company, e.g. Cook shouting down an investor questioning the need for green initiatives, or Schultz telling investors they could sell if they don't like his support for same-sex relationships. These two held on, but countless others surely sacrificed their values at the altar of shareholder value. In short, I'm not holding my breath that we'll see workplace democracy or holacracy at a public company anytime soon.
Heh. Yeah, I somehow forgot about that in my zeal. Complicates my thesis somewhat. You'd think I'd remember who Amazon bought while I was working there, but there were a lot of acquisitions that year…
In a nutshell, the holacracy system will have "circles" of individuals which act as semi-autonomous groups to achieve results. Each circle might function democratically. Semco is a more traditional company with a workplace democracy overlay on top. This piece goes into more detail: http://jonathangifford.com/maverick-ricardo-semler-10-key-de...
EDIT: And oh yeah, both Zappos and Semco are privately held. The linked article discusses this in the comments, but in recent years we've had more illustrative examples of how profit incentive sucks character and morals from a company, e.g. Cook shouting down an investor questioning the need for green initiatives, or Schultz telling investors they could sell if they don't like his support for same-sex relationships. These two held on, but countless others surely sacrificed their values at the altar of shareholder value. In short, I'm not holding my breath that we'll see workplace democracy or holacracy at a public company anytime soon.