Employee Ownership, Employee Attitudes, and Firm Performance

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). Attitudinal and behavioral studies tend to find higher employee commitment among employee-owners but mixed results on satisfaction, motivation, and other measures. Perceived participation in decisions is not in itself automatically increased through employee ownership, but may interact positively with employee ownership in affecting attitudes. While few studies individually find clear links between employee ownership and firm performance, meta-analyses favor an overall positive association with performance for ESOPs and for several cooperative features. The dispersed results among attitudinal and performance studies indicate the importance of firm-level employee relations, human resource policies, and other circumstances.

Monitoring Colleagues at Work: Profit-Sharing, Employee Ownership, Broad-Based Stock Options and Workplace Performance in the United States

This study seeks to increase our understanding of worker reactions to shirking by analyzing two new questionson shirking from the 2002 General Social Science Survey (GSS). We developed the questions in order toilluminate the factors that enable some shared capitalist enterprises to overcome the free rider or 1/N dilemma.Our guiding principle is the notion that for profit-sharing, worker ownership, and broad-based stock options toproduce economic benefits, workers must "buy into" shared arrangements and create a workplace culture thatdiscourages shirking.

Profit Sharing: Does It Make a Difference?: The Productivity and Stability Effects of Employee Profit-Sharing Plans

Kruse details the reasons profit sharing plans are implemented and the systemic factors within firms, particularly in relation to unions, that influence whether or not they are successful. Presented is evidence based on a unique database developed from 500 public U.S. firms - matched to firm performance over the period of 1979-1991 - on the two central theories related to profit sharing: 1) The Productivity Theory, and 2) the Stability Theoryhttps://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1084/thumbnail.jp

The Same Yet Different: Worker Reports on Labour Practices and Outcomes in a Single Firm Across Countries

This paper examines cross-country differences in labour policies and practices and employee performance and attitudes toward work from a sample of nearly 30,000 employees in a large multinational manufacturing firm. The analysis shows: 1) large establishment and country differences in work practices, performance, and attitudes toward work across countries; 2) qualitatively similar responses of workers to work practices across countries; 3) a strong link between the establishment average of employee reports on the quality of labour-management relations and establishment average measures of employee performance 4) a positive relation between average employee performance and average employee-management relations at the country level, but no relation between country level performance in the firm and measures of the extent of national labour regulations or practices.