Stock Ownership and Work Motivation
Topics include: ownership and motivation, different ways to become an owner, and does ownership make a difference?
Creating the Most Frightening Company on Earth: An Interview with Andy Law of St. Luke’s
Though only five years old, employee-owned St. Luke’s Communications has become one of the most talked about advertising agencies in the United Kingdom, increasing its profits eightfold.
The Effect of ESOP Adoptions on Corporate Performance: Are There Really Performance Changes?
Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPS) have long been promoted as a motivational tool: employees become profit-minded owners. Latterly, however, more ESOPs are being used as part of a takeover defense: here, the ESOPs main purpose is to put more company stock in friendly hands – the employees – who, like existing management, could suffer layoffs, ect. in a hostile takeover.
Employee Ownership in Enterprises in Africa and Asia
This paper examines wider employee share ownership in developing and newly industrializing countries with particular emphasis on Africa and Asia. The first section reviews the available evidence on the extent of wider employee share ownership. The second identifies the key issues relating to the implementation of wider employee share ownership: the objectives for employee ownership, … Read More
Carris Companies’ Long and Winding Road to Employee Ownership and Values Based Governance
A rapidly expanding entrepreneurial company, the Carris firm is—by its owner’s design—gradually becoming an employee-owned and-directed organization…
Stock Price and Operating Performance of ESOP firms: A Time-Series Analysis
Prior literature suggests that the impact of employee ownership on employee behavior may depend on the financial rewards associated with ownership. As the financial value of ownership accounts increases, employee attitudes become more positive, which, in turn, improves organizational performance. In this paper, we explore this financial perspective of employee ownership by examining the relationship between stock price and operating performance of ESOP firms.
Worker Capitalists? Giving Employees an Ownership Stake
This article analyzes the emergent role of employees as a key shareholder group. The authors discusses four major drivers of the trend: tax incentives, decreased vulnerability to takeover, human resources management, and employee motivation.
Employee Buyouts and Industrial Relations under Employee Ownership: A Case Study of Karabuk Steel Mill
This article examines the employee buyout process and industrial relations under employee ownership based on the case study of the Karabuk steel mill.
Cooperative Firms in Theory and Practice
Cooperatives are not, as everyone at this conference knows, just a peripheral or incidental or anachronistic or culturally limited form of organization. Rather, they are big business of a distinctly modern type.
The New Math of Ownership
In order to solve high-tech’s employee retention problems, Bill Gross, the chairman and founder of Idealab, proposes a radical solution: give all workers a significant equity stake.
The Perception and Effects of Share Ownership: Empirical Evidence from Employee Buy Outs
This paper explores the impact of employee ownership on employee attitudes, using additional data obtained from four UK bus companies which had adopted the ESOP form of employee share ownership. After reviewing the recent UK literature, the paper highlights findings from US literature that a ‘sense of ownership’ is an important intervening variable between actual ownership and additudinal change, and that opportunities for participation in decision-making are more important that ownership per se in generating feelings of ownership.
Employee Ownership as Catalyst of Organizational Change
This article identifies several key factors as mediating links between employee ownership plans and organizational effectiveness: the initiator’s purpose of the employee ownership plan; perceptions of ownership; level of participative decision-making systems; and organizational culture.
Employee Stock Ownership and Corporate Performance Among Public Companies
This study compares the corporate performance in 1990/91 of two groups of public companies: those in which employees owned more than 5% of the company’s stock, and all others.
Why Do Firms Adopt Profit Sharing and Employee Ownership Plans?
Profit-sharing and employee ownership in companies have attracted considerable interest, yet there has been little research on factors predicting the adoption and maintenance of these plans. This study uses new data from a survey of 500 US public companies, and panel data on corporate financial variables, to examine factors predicting the presence and adoption of profit-sharing and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in the 1975–91 period.
Employee participation, ownership, and productivity: A theoretical framework
A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed.
Work Alienation and Problem Alcohol Behavior
Using a sample of production workers from union, nonunion, producer cooperative, and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) wood products mills in the Northwest, we test the general proposition that work alienation, defined as low job autonomy, low use of capacities, and lack of participation in decision-making in the workplace, is associated with heavy drinking and negative consequences from drinking.
Customer Satisfaction Incentives
Customer satisfaction incentive schemes are increasingly common in a variety of industries. We offer explanations as to how and when incenting employees on customer satisfaction is profitable and offer several recommendations for improving upon current practice.
The Effects of Employee Ownership on Employee Attitudes – An Integrated Causal Model and Path-Analysis
Research on employee-owned organizations to date has utilized alternative theoretical perspectives and has examined varying attitudinal outcomes. This study reviews previous research and attempts to integrate the findings into a causal model that combines the results of prior studies. The resulting causal model was tested empirically with a sample (N = 181) of employees from a firm that adopted an employee ownership programme.
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Producer Cooperatives: Will Ever the Twain Meet?
Producer cooperatives (hereafter, PC) have existed in Western economies since the advent of the factory system. The oldest surviving PCs in the U.K. and Italy are over one hundred years old. By analyzing the theoretical properties of PCs, economists hope to assess whether popularization of the PC form, or transplantation of some of its characteristics into other organizations, would benefit or harm social welfare.
The Elusive ESOP–Productivity Link: Evidence from US Firm-Level Data
This paper investigates whether employee participation in ownership or profit-sharing in publicly held firms through an ESOP or profit-sharing plan was positively associated with productivity measures. The sample consists of firms that adopted such plans during 1982 through 1987.
The Scope, Nature, and Effects of Employee Stock Ownership Plans in Japan
Using data for various years, including new data for 1973 through 1984, the scope, nature, determinants, and effects of employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) in Japan are examined.
Practice Note: Questions and Answers Regarding ESOPs for Family Businesses
Assessing the applicability of employee stock ownership plans for a family firm requires a basic understanding of their characteristics, followed by a careful analysis of the costs and benefits in the specific case. This note provides general information and offers guides for the critical, specific questions an adviser or owner should ask.
Employee Ownership, Attitudes, and Turnover: An Empirical Assessment
Previous research on employee-owned organizations has been limited in time frame and in the outcomes examined, which have been primarily attitudinal measures. This study examined the effects of an employee ownership program on employee attitudes and actual turnover behavior over an extended time period.
Workers as Owners: An Empirical Comparison of Intra-firm Inequalities at Employee-owned and Conventional Companies
Based on a sample of three employee-owned and seven conventional companies, this study empirically tests the theoretical claim that employee ownership and management reduces inequality at the firm level. Inequality is broadly defined as the unequal distribution of income, wealth, power, prestige, and privileges, as well as the existence of social boundaries between classes.
The Viability of Employee-Owned Firms: Evidence from France
This study examines data on French producer cooperatives for the years 1970-79 to test the widely accepted theoretical prediction that employee-owned firms either will fail as commercial undertakings or degenerate into capitalist firms as the proportion of hired workers who are not members of the cooperative firm increases.