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.
We examine labor productivity in small, medium, and large firms that broadly distribute stock options under starkly different market conditions – during the bull (1995-1997) and bear (2000-2002) stock markets. We find greater labor output in both upward and downward markets in all firm size categories, with the exception of small firms in a declining market, where the productivity is also greater, but the statistical significance of the result is weak.
This paper examines the productivity effect of the adoption of executive and broad-based stock options. The findings include a positive impact on productivity after the introduction of both executive and broad-based stock options.
In this paper, we use empirical analysis to analyze company characteristics associated with the adoption and maintenance of broad-based stock option plans. Overall, our results provide support to the claim that higher monitoring costs prompt firms to adopt and maintain employee stock option plans.
Is it true that small businesses are just big businesses that haven’t succeeded yet? John Abrams’ company pursues conscious growth not maximum growth.
Over 25 years, The Davey Tree Expert Company’s employee owners built a good small company into one of the premier companies in its industry, with an entrepreneurial zest for new products and acquisitions. The company’s development would have pleased its inventive founder and provably surprised the family members who sold it to hesitant employees in 1979.
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.
Carole Pateman argues that democratic participation in the workplace can increase workers’ feelings of political efficacy and political participation. We explore this issue by looking at the implementation of a high involvement work system (HIWS), using both cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons.
By law, shareholders have an exclusive right to make certain corporate decisions, and this arrangement is generally justified by the shareholder’s role as the owner of the firm. However, many thoughtful observers hold that such a privileged position for shareholders is morally objectionable, in part because it neglects the important role played by employees.
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.
The case examines how Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation Holdings (SRC), a key player in the engine and parts remanufacturing market in the US, turned itself around by implementing the ‘Open Book Management’ (OBM) philosophy.
The Baby Boom is de-booming and soon there will be many more jobs than people available to fill them. The message: Keep your workers happy today.
UAL suffered from particular design flaws in its stock ownership plan and, more seriously, the absence of complementary institutions focused on the distinctive problems of employee-owned firms.
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.
Details a thinly disguised situation faced by a recent Harvard MBA graduate who was forced by a prospective employer to place a dollar value on a grant of stock options.
Mike Katz, an MBA with several years of manufacturing management experience, talks about purchasing Molded Dimensions, Inc. (MDI), a Wisconsin-based plastics manufacturer, with his wife Linda, who also has a manufacturing background.
In the wake of the spectacular bankruptcies of Enron, United Airlines, and Polaroid, employee stock ownership plans have come under intense media scrutiny during the past year. The staggering losses of employees’ retirement savings have prompted pundits to predict the demise of ESOPs, and politicians to call for regulatory overhaul.
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.
Students prepare an analysis of Microsoft Corporation’s financial statements and footnotes to understand the impact of its use of stock options.
This article describes several forms of stock purchase plans in Canada and examines participation using the Workplace and Employee Survey. Some U.S. statistics are presented as well.
Many explanations for the rarity of workers’ control have been offered, but there have been few attempts to assess these hypotheses in a systematic way. This book draws upon economic theory, statistical evidence, and case studies to frame an explanation.
Employee stock ownership programs (ESOP) may become a source of competitive advantage but a threat to a firm’s survival as well. Strategic stakeholder negotiation, on the other hand, is a process through which an organization negotiates with multiple stakeholders in order to achieve a strategic goal. Such perspective helps to illustrate the importance of understanding, balancing, and managing stakeholder demands in ESOP-related negotiations. The airline industry provides an interesting arena in which to study this process.
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.
The author considers the idea that employee ownership of the organizations they work in can influence the dynamics of ‘sustainable peace.’
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.