The Wealthy and Powerful Discover Inequality
Even the rich are admitting that inequality is bad for business…
The Citizen’s Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century
The idea of workers owning the businesses where they work is not new. In America’s early years, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison believed that the best economic plan for the Republic was for citizens to have some ownership stake in the land, which was the main form of productive capital. This book traces the development of that share idea in American history and brings its message to today’s economy, where business capital has replaced land as the source of wealth creation.
Reimagining Capitalism
This special edition of The Nation brings together a wide range of articles on new ways to shape capitalism, and to work on economic recovery.
Inclusive Capitalism for the American Workforce: Reaping the Rewards of Economic Growth through Broad-based Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
What can be done to reverse the economic disparity in our nation and restore prosperity for all? This paper lays out a policy reform that will help restore the link between economic growth and the earnings of workers so that the recovery re-establishes a prosperous middle class. The reform encourages firms to develop broad-based incentive compensation systems that link employee earnings to the performance of the firm. This reform would give employees access to the capital-related earnings of their companies comparable to that of the senior executives who run these firms.
Do Workers Gain by Sharing? Employee Outcomes Under Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing, and Broad-Based Stock Options
Apart from the extreme cases that get publicized, are employee stock ownership plans generally good or bad for workers?
Shared Capitalism in the US Economy: Prevalence, Characteristics, and Employee Views of Financial Participation in Enterprises
Between one-third and one-half of employees participate directly in company performance through profit sharing, gain sharing, employee ownership, or stock options.
Worker Responses to Shirking Under Shared Capitalism
Group incentive systems have to overcome the free rider or 1/N problem, which gives workers an incentive to shirk, if they are to succeed.
Risk and Lack of Diversification Under Employee Ownership and Shared Capitalism
This paper addresses whether the risk in shared capitalism makes it unwise for most workers or whether the risk can be managed to limit much of the loss of utility from holding the extra risk.
Broad-Based Stock Options and Company Performance: What the Research Tells Us
The authors found that companies with broad-based stock option plans (here, defined as those where most nonmanagement employees receive option grants) had statistically significant higher productivity levels and annual growth rates than public companies in general and their peers.
The Beyster Fellowship Symposium Video Series
The Beyster Fellowship Symposium brings together academic leaders and new scholars involved with evaluating broad-based employee ownership (EO) and entrepreneurism. The first symposium was held July 2009 in La Jolla, CA. Over 40 academics shared their research findings and participated in an MIT Enterprise Forum panel discussion, which was attended by more than 200 people. The following are videos of Symposium presentations highlighting multiple dimensions of the history, development, and process of employee ownership.
Creating a Bigger Pie? The Effects of Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing, and Stock Options on Workplace Performance
This paper uses data from NBER surveys of over 40,000 employees in hundreds of facilities in 14 firms and from employees on the 2002 and 2006 General Social Surveys to explore how shared compensation affects turnover, absenteeism, loyalty, worker effort, and other outcomes affecting workplace performance.
Who Has a Better Idea? Innovation, Shared Capitalism, and Human Resources Policies
This paper investigates the relationship of ‘shared capitalist’ compensation systems—profit/gain sharing, employee ownership, and stock options—to the culture for innovation and employees’ ability and willingness to engage in innovative activity.
Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-Based Stock Options
This collection of papers provides background on a number of employee ownership issues.
Shared Capitalism at Work: Introduction
Almost half of American private-sector employees participate in shared capitalism — employment relations where the pay or wealth of workers is directly tied to workplace or firm performance.
Employee Ownership Video Collection Teaching Addendum
The Employee Ownership Video Collection Teaching Addendum presented by the Foundation for Enterprise Development is divided into four sections, Teaching in Entrepreneurship Programs, the History of Broad-Based Ownership, Innovation and High-Tech, and Money and People. This video outline is designed to explore the ways to incorporate employee ownership in your class curriculum, learn about the early beginnings of employee ownership and how it has evolved especially in the high-tech fields, and to discover the culture of participation embraced by employee-owned businesses.
The Political Economy of Employee Ownership in the United States: From Economic Democracy to Industrial Democracy?
This study examines the development of economic democracy in the United States since the 1700s with particular emphasis on the last 30 years. The particular focus is on employee ownership…
Broad-Based Employee Stock Options in the U.S.: Company Performance and Characteristics
This paper analyses data on 490 companies with broad-based stock option plans, matched to data from Compustat in order to compare their characteristics and performance to that of other public companies.
An Assessment of Employee Ownership in the United States With Implications for the EU
There is a significant gap in the incidence and development of employee ownership between the European Union (EU) and the US when both sectors are examined.
In the Company of Owners: The Truth About Stock Options and Why Every Employee Should Have Them
The string of business scandals that recently engulfed America painted a picture of corporate chieftains lining their pockets by cutting corners, cooking the books, and duping gullible investors. In doing so, greedy CEOs have hijacked what could be one of the most important business innovations in decades: stock options for all employees.
Motivating Employee-Owners in ESOP Firms: Human Resource Policies and Company Performance
The growth of ESOPs over the past 25 years is part of a general growth in compensation arrangements linking worker pay to company performance, including profit sharing, gain-sharing, and broad-based stock options in addition to the various methods of employee ownership.
Broad-Based Employee Stock Options in US ‘New Economy’ Firms
This paper compares the performance of 229 `New Economy’ firms offering broad-based stock options to that of their non-stock option counterparts. A simple comparison of these firms reveals that the former have higher shareholder returns, Tobin’s q and new knowledge generation.
Public Companies with Broad-Based Stock Options: Corporate Performance from 1992-1997
This report compares the performance of corporations that offer their employees broad-based stock option plans to those that do not offer their employees broad-based stock option plans.
Largest Study Yet Shows ESOPs Improve Performance and Employee Benefits
The results of this study showed that ESOP companies perform better in the post-ESOP period than their pre-ESOP performance would have predicted.
Broad-Based Employee Stock Options – A Union-Nonunion Comparison
Until recently, stock options were primarily reserved for senior executives and selected managers in most American corporations. In the last decade or so, however, stock options have become part of the compensation package for an increasing number of rank-and-file employees.
Sharing Ownership via Employee Stock Ownership
This paper summarizes the findings from over 50 large-sample empirical studies that have been done on employee ownership and broad-based stock option plans in the past 25 years, covering studies on plan adoption, employee attitudes and behaviours, firm performance, and employee wages and wealth.