After obtaining his BA in Chinese at Oxford in 1970, David Erdal worked as a teacher in Mao's China, before returning to the UK to join Tullis Russell, his family's paper manufacturing business. He obtained his MBA at Harvard with distinction in 1981, and became executive chairman of the company in 1985, immediately introducing policies of informing and involving all the workforce, and sharing both the profits and, gradually, the ownership of the company with all employees. He was awarded the Scottish Business Achievement Award in 1989. In 1994 he led the transformation of the company's ownership in a leveraged buyout; it became wholly owned by the employees and by trusts for the employees.

Impressed by the obvious power of that system in motivating people and achieving high productivity, he studied part time for a PhD in 'The psychology of sharing: an evolutionary approach', the degree being awarded by the University of St Andrews in 2000. He was MD of Baxi Partnership Limited from then until 2006, when he gradually moved to part time working. He remains a non-executive director of that company, which is a trust-owned fund aimed at structuring and financing all-employee buyouts of medium-sized companies. He is also chair of the Employee Share Ownership Trust of ChildBase, a nursery company moving towards employee ownership. ChildBase has consistently been placed high in the Times hundred best companies to work for. Most of his time is spent researching and writing about employee ownership. In March 2011 Bodley Head published Beyond the Corporation: Humanity Working, his book on employee-owned companies, their outstanding performance in terms of productivity and in terms of the happiness of those involved, and the light that this sheds on modern theories of business and finance.

David Erdal is also a Non-Executive Director of Baxi Partnership.

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