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This study examines the roles of organizational justice and trust in a specific type of management control system (MCS), gain-sharing. According to the proposed theory, employee perceptions involving the procedural and distributive justice of the gain-sharing plan influence employee trust in managers. Positive perceptions of fairness lead to high trust, which, in turn has positive consequences for the organization such as lower employee turnover. To investigate these issues, a survey was administered to employees of a large manufacturing company. Results of structural equation modeling indicate that employee perceptions regarding the fairness of the gain-sharing plan are positively related to employee trust in managers. Further, trust is linked to employee turnover intentions. The results imply that the organizational justice of an MCS has consequences for the attitudes and behaviors of employees and thus the success or failure of the MCS.

Risk-sharing is a crucial issue in order to evaluate the performance of a monetary union. By implementing conventional econometric techniques, this paper intends to estimate the degree of risk-sharing through the cross-ownership of assets within 11 European countries in the period 1971–2014. We show that risk-sharing has been increasing after the launch of the euro due to increased cross-ownership of assets. Nevertheless, we also show that despite the extreme needs for adjustment mechanisms as a reaction to asymmetric shocks in the EMU during the crises, the estimated market risk-sharing mechanism seems to have remained marginal in this period. We also show that the degree of asymmetry (potential benefits from risk-sharing) has declined with the start of the EMU, but it has sharply increased during the crises period. This implies that EMU countries have needed good functioning risk-sharing mechanisms during the crisis, while in this period their estimated performance does not seem to have improved. We interpret these results as the evidence of a missing element of the EMU that forced governments to intervene by means of fiscal policy to tackle the imbalances deriving from the financial crisis. Therefore, we conclude that the weakness in the risk-sharing has been one of the channels that allowed the global financial crisis to mutate in a sovereign debt crisis in the EMU.

This chapter addresses employee ownership within a strategic human resource management (SHRM) framework that has gained increased attention. The study extends the configurational approach to SHRM and argues that the construct of the workforce philosophy is the primary factor that determines the coherence of HRM systems. In other words, the workforce philosophy propagates the idea that employees both deserve to be co-owners and must be taken seriously as such. In addition, the chapter argues that the HRM system should reflect this workforce philosophy: the HRM system should contain HRM practices that mirror the rights that comprise the very construct of “ownership.” We present the possible core HRM practices of the “ownership high-performance work system (O-HPWS),” which, similar to employee ownership, produces favorable outcomes. The chapter also addresses the important mediating role of employees’ perception and attributions related to employee share ownership in the relationship of the HRM system (with employee share ownership) to favorable outcomes.

This chapter analyzes the determinants of adoption of sharing arrangements by companies. Using propositions from agency and strategic human resource management frameworks predicting the adoption of sharing arrangements, we test the relationships with a large international dataset. The study finds that adoption of sharing arrangements is related to human capital investments, individual incentives, involvement practices, and human resource management practices and that adoption is affected by country differences.

In this chapter, we empirically investigate an important question of “how does knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage impact the alliance performance in dyadic coopetitive alliance settings that involve small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).” Taking the perspective of the focal SME to address this question, we posit that while knowledge sharing positively associates with alliance performance, inadvertent knowledge leakage is negatively related to performance. We further postulate that under the conditions of high knowledge leakage, the positive impacts of knowledge sharing on performance would be reduced. Our structural model results based on a survey of 186 SMEs in the high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries in Sweden show support for two of the hypothesized relationships. More specifically, the results show that knowledge sharing has a positive effect on alliance performance but knowledge leakage has an insignificant direct effect on performance. However, knowledge leakage plays a negative moderating role on the relationship between knowledge sharing and performance. We contribute by demonstrating the effects of knowledge sharing and leakage in under-researched but important dyadic one-to-one coopetitive alliances involving SMEs.

This study investigates the relationship between financial participation plans, that is profit sharing, share plans and option plans, and firm financial performance using a longitudinal panel data set of non-financial listed companies for the period 1992–2009 comprising 2,216 observations. In addition, it makes a distinction between financial participation plans that are narrow based, directed to top management and executives only, and broad based, targeted to all employees. The panel data also allow us to take into account time lag effects, as profit sharing is usually said to have short-term effects while stock options and share plans are more targeted to longer term impact. Our results show that broad-based profit-sharing plans and combinations of broad-based profit sharing and share plans are positively related with many firm financial performance indicators relative to companies without these plans. However, the results consistently show negative associations between both narrow- and broad-based option plans and firm financial performance.

This chapter and case study examine how and which structured elements of an employee-owned business contribute to building the economic security and asset wealth of the lowest-wage and skilled employees of the firm. It paves the way for greater understanding about how intentionally structured workplaces can address wealth inequality and economic security through income and non-income opportunity systems.

The study draws upon qualitative interviews with four members of management, two plant managers, and 12 low-income employee-owners. Company documents and confidential employee data were provided for direct research analysis. Interviews took place at company locations, and covered employees from all shifts.

Employee ownership structures provide an important tool for advancing policy support and management practices to rebuild the wealth building benefits of work for low-income workers.

To ensure confidentiality, the study is anonymized and does not directly draw on the worker-owner interviews. This limits the opportunity to demonstrate the effect of structure on workforce; nonetheless, the empirical data tell an important story.

Expanding wealth inequality and economic precarity among low- and moderate-income workers has raised broad debates about how shifts in the structure of work, through new business, capital, and ownership structures, may be contributing to these social problems.

The employee benefits of employee ownership are not fully studied. This case contributes to understanding how employee ownership may reduce gender and racial wealth gaps, build family well-being, and become a model for structuring opportunity for those traditionally left out of the economic mainstream.

Advances in technology, operations research, and data driven pricing and marketing are leading pricing strategy into new and untested waters – toward dynamic pricing, and variable pricing strategies, which ultimately require changes in how we view pricing strategy. The dominant view of pricing strategy is that pricing goals, objectives, and strategies should be formulated a priori, and should be consistent with marketing and corporate strategies – deliberate pricing strategy. This chapter argues that firms need to develop new strategic pricing skills that lead to more improvisational, innovative, or adaptive pricing strategies. I call this type of price strategy-making emergent pricing strategy. Innovative pricing strategies that the organization judges, or senses to be effective, are repeated, shared, expanded, and refined into successful pricing patterns that, over time and across situations, become pricing strategy. Thus, rather than specifically designing pricing strategy to achieve a goal, here the organization acts upon a price innovation that seems to make sense for this customer, this market segment, this setting, and this situation, then interprets the outcomes, signals, and reactions that seem to flow from the pricing action, and shares and encourages adoption and adaption by others in the organization. Emergent pricing strategy is particularly useful in unstable, turbulent, and complex product and market environments in which price-sensitive buyers wield significant power and influence.

In the last 20 years wage inequality in the United States has grown significantly. At the same time, the increased popularity of employee involvement or the so-called high-performance work practices seems to offer opportunities for more skilled, autonomous, and participatory work. For many, this is a positive alternative to low-wage jobs, though others suggest that such jobs may raise skill requirements sufficiently to leave many workers behind and thereby contribute to growing inequality. Yet others are more critical and view participatory work systems as merely a method of work intensification. This paper examines the impact of participative work systems on workers’ wages and generally finds modest evidence of significant effects.