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.
Can a support organization enhance the development and performance of an employee-owned sector in a market economy? That is the question this paper will address.
Research on employee ownership has focused on questions of productivity, profitability, and employee attitudes and behavior, while there has been little attention to the most basic measure of performance: survival of the company. This study uses data on all U.S. public companies as of 1988, following them through 2001 to examine how employee ownership is related to survival.
This paper presents finding from our most recent research on the transformation of participatory employment practices of Japanese firms in the 1990s, during which the Japanese economy slowed down considerably. The operation appears to be of particular public policy interest for many countries considering participatory employment practices as a way to improve their productivity performance and thus competitiveness.
The fifty employee owners of Jet Rubber Company, a manufacturer of custom molded goods and rubber-to-metal parts founded in 1955, celebrated the 10th anniversary of their ESOP in March 2003.
They were the currency of the American dream. Now they are worthless paper — a symbol of CEO greed. What went wrong with stock options? Where do companies go from here? Our only option: Visit one of the world’s leading authorities on employee ownership.
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.
It would be easy to look at what’s happening at United Airlines, now on the brink of bankruptcy, and conclude that the concept of employee ownership in America has fallen into a tailspin.
The idea of employee ownership has attracted support across the political spectrum, often being seen as a form of economic democracy that complements our political democracy. Along with these positive views, however, there have been many concerns expressed about employee ownership particularly that it can expose workers to excessive risk and may in some cases increase labor management conflict and lower economic performance.
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.
This paper examines the use and consequences of shared compensation plans (profit sharing, profit related pay, SAYE schemes and company stock option plans) in a sample of UK workplaces and firms in the 1990s.
Topics include: ownership and motivation, different ways to become an owner, and does ownership make a difference?
There are at least six reasons why we should be concerned with encouraging employee ownership at thesubnational level: at the level of the state, the province, the region, the municipality, or other subnationalgovernmental units or at the level of the industrial branch, cutting across governmental geographic units.
This paper reviews the conflicts of interests introduced by employee participation in the governance of a firm and how these can be constructively resolved by introducing a division of power between investors and employees and/or between management and workers.
This case describes Microsoft’s human resource philosophies and policies and illustrates how they work in practice to provide the company with a major source of competitive advantage. Discusses employee development, motivation, and retention efforts in one of Microsoft’s product groups.
An equity research analyst is trying to decide how to analyze Silicon Graphics’ financial performance.
In this paper, we take on a seemingly very simple set of empirical questions that we hope will shed light on whether employee ownership of firms ‘works’…
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.
In 1994 United Airlines became the largest employee majority-owned enterprise in the United States, with various groups of employees – most represented by unions – having purchased 55% of its stock in exchange for various concessions. The employees accepted pay cuts and made other concessions, but were also granted representation on the company’s board of directors…[newline]
Employee ownership in U.S. companies has grown substantially in the past 20 years. This paper reviews and provides some meta-analyses on the accumulated evidence concerning the prevalence, causes, and effects of employee ownership, covering 25 studies of employee attitudes and behaviors, and 27 studies of productivity and profitability (with both cross-sectional and pre/post comparisons).
A perennial issue is the study of organizational behavior is the impact on productivity of participation by workers in a firm’s decisionmaking. The question has returned to the foreground is the recent debate over policies to increase U.S. productivity growth.
A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed.
This book that has, since 1992, become the primer for open-book management, a new method based on the concept of democracy, the spirit of sports, and the reality of numbers.
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.
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.