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In this research, the authors try to answer the question of when broad-based employee share ownership (ESO) is more likely to be used and how it can be managed more effectively from the vertical fit perspective in strategic human resource management (HRM).

The study analyzes an unbalanced panel sample of 614 organizations (1,601 organization-year data points) in South Korea, utilizing hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).

The analysis demonstrates that organizations are more likely to adopt broad-based ESO when they utilize the prospector and analyzer strategies as opposed to the defender strategy. The analysis also reveals that the relationship between broad-based ESO and labor productivity is positive only when organizations utilize the prospector strategy as opposed to other types of strategies (i.e. analyzer and defender strategies).

The findings first indicate that the decision to adopt a broad-based ESO in organizations should be informed by their business strategy if they want to enhance labor productivity. Specifically, the results demonstrate that only the prospector firms, rather than defenders or analyzers, can reap the productivity benefit of broad-based ESO. Second, since innovation is a major source of productivity for prospector firms, the findings demonstrate that a broad-based ESO can be a vehicle that drives innovation. As a result, firms may want to consider utilizing broad-based ESOs to foster innovation.

The findings emphasize the relevance of the “vertical fit” perspective in examining the broad-based ESO and firm productivity relationship. Most past research utilized the “horizontal fit” framework in refining the relationship between broad-based ESO and productivity. Thus, the study emphasizes the need to utilize the “vertical fit” perspective, and not only the “horizontal fit” perspective, in the broad-based ESO research. Through this, the study meaningfully extends the research on the productivity effect of broad-based ESO by adding an important moderator (i.e. strategy) to the model.

The purpose of this paper is to review the historical background for broad-based ownership in the USA, the development of forms of employee ownership and profit sharing in the USA, the research literature on employee ownership and profit sharing and related employee participation, the development of policy and options for new policies.

It is a literature review.

There are four reasons to be interested in employee stock ownership and profit sharing today: first, employee share ownership and profit sharing can increase worker pay and wealth and broaden the overall distribution of income and wealth, a key ingredient for a successful democracy. To be a tool for reducing inequality, employee stock ownership and profit sharing must be spread more widely and meaningfully than it is today. Second, employee share ownership and profit sharing provide incentives for more effort, cooperation, information sharing and innovation that can improve workplace performance and company productivity. Third, employee share ownership and profit sharing can save jobs by enhancing firm survival and employment stability, with wider economic benefits that come from decreasing unemployment. Fourth, employee share ownership and profit sharing can create more harmonious workplaces with greater corporate transparency and increased worker involvement in their work lives through access to information and participation in workplace decisions.

Growth has been extraordinarily sluggish in the recovery from the Great Recession and has weakened in advanced countries over a longer period, leading some analysts to believe that the authors have entered a new economic era of small to modest growth. This may turn out to be true, which will increase the importance of growth-enhancing policies. The evidence that firms with employee stock ownership and/or profit-sharing perform better than others suggests that policies that extend ownership would boost the country’s lagging growth rate. The evidence that employee share ownership firms preserve jobs and survive recessions better than others suggests that policies that extend ownership could help stabilize the economy when the next recession comes down the pike.

Because there may be informational or institutional barriers about the benefits of ownership and sharing and the ways firms can introduce such programs that government can help overcome. Government has often played a role in promoting performance-enhancing work practices to enhance overall economy-wide outcomes from higher productivity and innovation, such as the long history of agricultural extension services (since 1887) to spread information on best practices in farming, and employer education on safety practices conducted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Because of the “externalities” – effects that extend beyond the firm and its members – that greater ownership/profit sharing can bring us. If employee ownership and profit sharing lead to fewer layoffs and firm closures, this can reduce recession-created drops in consumer purchasing power and aggregate demand; government expenditures on unemployment compensation and other forms of support; decreased tax base for supporting schools and infrastructure; and potentially harmful social and personal effects, such as marital breakups and alcohol abuse. Apart from unemployment, more broadly shared prosperity and lower inequality may also have wider benefits for macroeconomic growth, stability and societal outcomes, as described by a number of social scientists. To the extent the ownership and profit sharing is a public good, a nudge in policy to consider the idea makes sense.

Because it is hard to find policy options that are as bipartisan as the shares policy. In The Citizens’ Share, and in other articles and venues, the authors lay out the areas in which there is evidence or logic for in-depth development of, and experimentation with, several broad policy directions, with the details to be worked out by members of Congress based on their deliberations.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Across 614 organizations in South Korea, regarding the operation of the country’s broad-based ESO scheme – known as “Ulisaju” – this is more likely to be offered to employees working on companies with a prospector strategy or an analyzer strategy, rather than a defender strategy. Because prospector firms are most focused on achieving and sustaining innovation. Prospector strategy firms yielded 13% higher productivity from their people. The choice of business strategy influences productivity, since broad-based ESO drives better productivity in prospector firms only.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Employee ownership has attracted much attention across the globe. Whether affected by the global financial crisis (GFC), or not, this paper seeks to canvass what is known about employee ownership in neo‐liberal political economies.

This paper is a literature review, cross cultural analysis and critique.

The findings indicate future research directions.

The paper suggests a reconsideration of organizational configurations for possible greater application in the future.

The paper hightlights the re‐regulation of neo‐liberal markets.

The paper focuses on employee share ownership schemes.

The purpose of this article is to examine the outcomes of a substantial broad‐based employee share‐ownership scheme for employee attitudes and behaviour in a privatised firm.

Results are based on a survey of 711 employees in Eircom, an Irish telecommunications firm, which is 35 percent employee‐owned.

The ESOP has created sizable financial returns and has had extensive influence in firm governance at the strategic level. However, findings show only a limited impact on employee attitudes and behaviour. This is attributed to a failure in creating a sense of employee participation and line of sight between employee performance and reward.

The aim of employee share‐ownership often includes aligning employee objectives with those of other shareholders, and thus improving labour performance. The findings in this study highlight a need to provide employees with a sense of ownership and control. Findings also question the assumption that where employees have a substantial shareholding, they will focus on securing the long‐term prospects of the firm.

Little research has examined the impact of a large employee shareholding on attitudes and behaviour within a public‐quoted firm. The substantial and unparalleled size of the Eircom ESOP presented a unique opportunity to conduct such a study.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss diverse matters concerning the field of Participation and Employee Ownership (PEO) coinciding with the launch of the JPEO.

This paper used mixed methods including bibliometric analysis.

Significant gaps exist in our knowledge of the scope and nature of PEO. Citation counts illustrate both the changing composition of research within PEO and faster relative growth than terms used to describe related fields such as labor unions and trade unions. Based on manually collected citation data I identify the most highly cited studies within PEO. Few of these studies attain a “home-run” citation count. However, PEO scholars are cited 19 percent more than economists in top 30 schools and the median C5 (total citations for the author’s five most highly cited papers) is more than 260 percent of the median for economists in “top 30” institutions. There is also some weak evidence that the citation bias in economics against female scholars is not as marked in PEO as elsewhere. A qualitative assessment of PEO studies suggests markedly uneven progress in empirical work across types of PEO.

No similar review has been done before.

Drivers and barriers for employee ownership vary between countries because of differences in Politics, Institutions and the Economy (PIE). By analyzing this variation, the purpose of this study is to answer why employee ownership has developed fast in the United States and not in Denmark.

The drivers and barriers for employee ownership are identified from the scientific literature, and the main societal dynamics are identified through the PIE model covering the dynamics between politics, institutional change and the economy. Politics focuses on different social groups influencing the development of institutions driving or hindering employee ownership in the economy.

United States has followed a self-enforcing circle with broad political support of “shared capitalism,” including the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) type of employee ownership. In Denmark, the labor movement rejected worker cooperatives as a main strategy and focused on building up the welfare state. Center-right parties favored employee stocks, but the institutional framework never overcame the barriers for employee ownership.

This is the first study to perform an analysis of politics, institutional change and economic development to explain drivers and barriers for employee ownership and to make a comparison between the development of employee ownership in the United States and Denmark.

This paper aims to identify the key lessons to learn from the US employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)-model. The lessons are, broad-based employee ownership is difficult to attain and sustain if employees have to use their own money to purchase shares. The paper works better when the shares are held in trust rather than being held individually. Broad-based employee ownership improves corporate performance and employee financial security. Employees care more about how employee ownership affects the stability of their jobs and retirement than having governance rights. If laws require democratic governance there will not be widespread employee ownership. Tax incentives are critical to induce companies and their owners to share ownership.

This paper is based on results from National Center for Employee Ownership research, a review of other research in the field, and the author’s own 45 years of experience in this field.

About one-quarter of the private sector workforce in the USA participates in some kind of employee ownership plan. There are 6,700 ESOPs in the USA with 14 million participants. The ESOPs hold over $1.4 trillion in assets. About 6,000 of these plans are in non-listed companies and the companies employ about two million people. Public companies ESOPs generally own under 10% of company stock; private company ESOPs usually own at least 30% of the stock and a majority of the plans own 100% of the stock. Most of these companies have between 20 and 500 employees.

The article gives a practitioner's overview over the main reasons behind the success of the ESOP model in the USA.

Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour.

Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB discourse, and contextualised within a background on the stock option phenomenon and recent accounting regulation, the paper argues that the fundamental nature of the capital‐labour relation continues resiliently into the IC labour (intellectual capital‐labour) relation.

There is strong evidence that broad‐based employee stock options (ESOPs) have become institutionalised in certain firms and sectors – but the future of such schemes is very uncertain (post 2005 accounting regulation). Overly unitarist HR/OB arguments are challenged here with empirical evidence on capital's more latently strategic purposes such as conserving cash, reducing reported accounting expense in order to boost reported earnings, deferring taxes, and attracting, retaining and exploiting key elements of labour.

Research supports the positive benefits of broad‐based employee stock ownership schemes. Further research on the benefits of such schemes and the reasons why they are or are not implemented is now required.

From the perspective of labour, nothing appears to have really changed (yet) in terms of the essential condition of intellectual capital.

This paper explicitly raises the issue of the ownership rights of labour to intellectual capital.

This study investigates whether broad-based employee ownership (BBEO), in isolation and in conjunction with cash profit sharing (CPS), can enhance labor productivity in family firms over nonfamily firms.

Hypothesis testing was conducted using cross-sectional time-series regression with a matched sample of 393 family and nonfamily firms listed on the US S&P 500 over a five-year timeframe.

Overall, the findings indicate that BBEO does not increase labor productivity more in family firms compared to nonfamily firms in the short term; however, BBEO does enable family firms to experience greater labor productivity relative to nonfamily firms beyond the short term. Moreover, when BBEO is combined with CPS, labor productivity improves more for family firms than nonfamily firms both in the short term and beyond.

While prior studies have relied largely on agency theory, this study contributes to the literature on family firms and employee incentives by being amongst the first to draw upon temporal motivation theory to distinguish between family and nonfamily firms regarding the incentive effect of BBEO on labor productivity.