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As managers throughout the UK's public sector face up to the challenge of change, how will they respond? If they default to established practice, largely imported over the past 30 years from the private sector, they are likely to place most emphasis on changing the formal processes, systems and structures of their various institutions, and on getting these ‘right’ through rational analysis, project management techniques, detailed implementation programmes and other ‘tools of the trade’. But organisations are made up of dynamic networks of people interacting with each other. And people have a habit of not conforming to the mechanistic assumptions that still channel much of mainstream management thinking about organisational change and performance. Ever‐present features of organisational life ‐ such as power and politics, informal processes, tensions and contradictions, and other aspects of the complex social dynamics of organisations ‐ tend to be dealt with superficially or ignored altogether. Research consistently suggests that, despite the plethora of tools and techniques, the success rate of organisational change is poor. This paper argues that this is due, in large part, to the failure of conventional management practice to take account of the inherent messiness of ‘real‐world’ organisations. And it suggests an alternative change‐leadership agenda that seeks to address this.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how board size and board member compensation impact the operating performance of Farm Credit Associations. Cooperatives are a unique business structure that might not have profit maximization as a goal. Thus measures of performance other than return on equity are used to establish the link.

The paper uses regression to explain the relationship between board characteristics and performance.

The results of the models of return on assets and equity indicated that board size and compensation explain little of the variability in performance in these profitability measures. The results of the models of operating efficiencies explained a greater proportion of the variability in the operating efficiency and operating expenses‐to‐average assets ratios. In both models the relationship exhibited diminishing returns to board size and per member compensation.

The data are based on just one year of performance, limiting the generalizability of the results.

The paper includes implications for the size of boards of directors and director compensation.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the impacts of boards of directors for cooperatives.

What enables some employee ownership firms to overcome the free rider problem and motivate employees to improve performance? This study analyzes the role of human resource policies in the performance of employee ownership companies, using employee survey data from 14 companies and a national sample of employee-owners. Between-firm comparisons of 11 ESOP firms show that an index of human resource policies, nominally controlled by management, is positively related to employee reports of co-worker performance and other good workplace outcomes (including perceptions of fairness, good supervision, and worker input and influence). Within-firm comparisons in three ESOP firms, and exploratory results from a national survey, show that employee-owners who participate in employee involvement committees are more likely to exert peer pressure on shirking co-workers. We conclude that an understanding of how and when employee ownership works successfully requires a three-pronged analysis of: (1) the incentives that ownership gives; (2) the participative mechanisms available to workers to act on those incentives; and (3) the corporate culture that battles against tendencies to free ride.

Offers an overall framework for understanding the complexities of collaborative working. After an analysis of the forces against collaborating, a social constructionist perspective is taken. A model to connect and integrate individual and collective perspectives is then presented and examined.

This volume of Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor Managed Firms consists of nine original papers grouped together under the title of “Employee Participation, Firm Performance and Survival.” The first four papers explore the growing area of empirical studies of participatory and labor-managed firms’ survival. The second group of three papers offers a number of new approaches and insights into the performance effects of participatory firms, while the final group of papers provides a broad-ranging synthesis and assessment of the experience of employee ownership and participation in transition.