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This paper investigated the effect of employee share ownership, mediated through psychological ownership, on organizational citizenship behavior. The analysis included the possible complementary role of High Performance Ownership systems. This paper investigated these relationships by analyzing employee survey data from a Dutch organization that has implemented employee share ownership. We used PLS, a variance-based structural equation model to test the hypotheses. The results showed a direct influence of employee ownership on organizational citizenship behavior, but the relationship was not mediated by psychological ownership. Unexpectedly, the results show that a High Performance Work System bundle without employee ownership generates psychological ownership, but this does not influence organizational citizenship behavior. This research could not confirm the comprehensive model in which employee ownership, HRM system, and psychological ownership are positively related to each other. We choose a deliberate set of HR practices on theoretical grounds, but future research could investigate other sets of HR practices that may produce the expected effects. This research showed that employee ownership has a positive influence on organizational citizenship behavior. Organizations are therefore advised to consider implementing employee ownership. The results also show that a set of HR practices positively influences psychological ownership. The results suggest that organizations should strive for a consistent message, which makes the employees feel that they are taken serious as and deserve to be owners. We analyzed the influence of a configuration of high performance ownership system on psychological ownership and organizational citizenship behavior that is not done before.

Political institutions and contemporary workplaces operate according to different rules. The seeming contradiction between these two spheres, one democratic and the other something else, presents an opportunity for productive speculation about the possibilities for reconciliation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for future research investigation of this perennial topic.

The discussion of whether the workplace can catch up with the democratic achievements of political life requires an understanding of the status quo, the prevailing frames or metaphors that govern our understanding of organizational life. Four metaphors are put forward to describe the prevailing spectrum of thought. In addition to metaphors, analogies are introduced as an interpretive tool to help guide the imaginative transition between political and workplace domains.

Democratic political cultures are supported by structures and institutions which encourage the expression of individual and collective voice. Workplaces, comprised of the same citizens who participate in the governance of communities, do not, with some important exceptions, offer the same opportunities for democratic participation. If a general analogy between political and workplace sphere is found persuasive, it should be possible to import and adapt democratic traditions from the former to the latter.

Discussions of workplace democracy often suffer from a certain naiveté, a bias against structure and toward informal consensus. Insofar as democratic workplaces are by definition smaller scale than political communities, this bias is defensible. This paper concludes however by asserting certain minimal “acid test” challenges to those who would promote the goal of workplace democracy.

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.

The balanced scorecard (BSC) allows firms to place importance on both financial and nonfinancial performance measures in four perspectives for developing and implementing corporate strategy and performance evaluation. The BSC literature however provides minimal insight on how to set targets, how to weigh measures when evaluating managers and the firm, and how to resolve conflicts that arise in the BSC process. Researchers have attempted to fill these gaps using two contending approaches. In particular, Datar et al. (2001) uses an agency model to select the optimal set of weights and more recently Herath et al. (2009) develop a mathematical programming–based collaborative decision model to find the optimal (or approximately optimal) set of target and weights considering inputs from two parties. In this article, we apply the Herath et al. (2009) model to a detailed BSC example. We demonstrate how the collaborative BSC model can be implemented in Microsoft Excel by practitioners to minimize BSC conflicts. Finally, we discuss how the model facilitates alignment and a culture of open reporting (information sharing) around the BSC that is necessary for its effective implementation.

Most analyses of the relationship between the internal distribution of formal organizational power, generally manifested in ownership and governance rights, and innovation efforts apply a principal-agent framework. The key implication of this framework is that firms with distributed formal power are more likely to engage in labor-intensive innovation because external capital providers are unwilling to entrust their investments to a worker controlled firm. In this paper, we critique the principal-agent framework and propose an alternative institutionalist approach, where the type of innovation pursued by firms with distributed formal power is contingent on the norms advanced by the innovation and the alignment of external stakeholders with those norms. After presenting this alternative framework, we illustrate its application with positive and negative cases of capital and labor-intensive innovation at the MONDRAGON cooperatives, a network of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. We conclude with a set of propositions to guide future research.

Using a population study, we provide evidence on the important but understudied issue of company survival under employee ownership, as well as on the performance effects of employee ownership and the issue of whether employee ownership substitutes for other pension benefits.

Company survival and pension benefits are assessed using a unique dataset from Dun & Bradstreet of privately held Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) companies over the 1988–1999 period, matched to non-ESOP companies in the same industry. Performance is assessed using pre/post-comparisons of ESOP adopters in the 1988–1994 period.

Privately held ESOP companies in 1988 were only half as likely as non-ESOP firms to go bankrupt or close over the 1988–1999 period, and only three-fifths as likely to disappear for any reason. The ESOP companies had significantly higher post-adoption annual employment and sales growth, along with higher sales per employee. ESOP companies are four times more likely than their non-ESOP pairs to have defined benefit pension plan and other forms of defined contribution plans.

The greater survival was not explained by higher productivity, or by greater compensation flexibility. The higher survival may instead be tied to complementary policies adopted along with ESOPs to create a more committed and engaged workforce that contributes ideas to enhance survival and is more flexible when economic difficulties arise. The pension results are consistent with other studies on compensation under employee ownership, suggesting that employee ownership is generally used as a form of efficiency wage to provide above-market compensation.

Higher survival among ESOP companies could result in lower job loss and unemployment, potentially providing a public policy rationale for support of employee ownership.

The chapter provides the first examination of company survival in privately held ESOP companies, and one of the few examinations of how ESOPs relate to other pension benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to delve into three themes about democratic enterprises.

(1) The first theme is the question of capital structure where labor-managed firms (LMFs) are often pictured as having “horizon problem.” Yet this is only a minor technical problem which is solved by the system of internal capital accounts as in the Mondragon cooperatives.

(2) The second theme concerns the attempt to implement participative management and the related ideas of active learning in educational theory in the workplace. The point is that the democratic firm is the natural setting to implement these ideas, not the conventional firm where the staff have the legal role of “employees” rented by the company.

(3) The third theme is the old canard the cooperatives are incompatible with entrepreneurship. My rethinking of the issue was inspired by the analysis of the late Jane Jacobs who emphasized that the primary means of growing economic “biomass” is through economic offspring (e.g., spin-offs) – in analogy with the biological principle of plentitude. Yet the conventional form of ownership operates as a fetter on this process since the ownership and management wants to expand its empire and maintain “ownership” of any potential offspring. But that constraint against spin-offs is absent in democratic firms, and the Mondragon complex has indeed illustrated how to catalyze this process of growth through offspring.

A public policy to encourage all companies to grow by affiliated and perhaps democratic spin-offs would create more jobs (through filling extra niches) and more stability (through the agility of separate companies).

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.

Past research has found employee ownership to be linked to better attitudes and behaviors. We investigate three possible mechanisms: (a) a selection effect – employees who buy stock in their own company may have better attitudes to begin with; (b) a status effect – employees who have any amount of employee ownership may have better attitudes; and (c) a size of stake effect – employee attitudes and behaviors may be influenced by the size of their employee ownership stake. We used a rich database of over 40,000 employee surveys from one large multinational company and 13 other companies. We find some support for all three mechanisms. Selection effects are indicated by several positive relationships between attitudes and stock that is bought by the employees rather than being granted by the employer. Status and size of stake effects are indicated by several positive relationships between attitudes and stock that is granted by the employer, particularly when the employee ownership is accompanied by high-performance work policies. While dividing employee ownership into bought or granted stock sheds light on the selection issue, the data are cross-sectional so selection and causality cannot be firmly established. There is need for further research on selection versus causality in examining the effects of employee ownership. The results indicate that companies may improve employee attitudes and behaviors of people by granting them stock and by having opportunities for employees to purchase stock. Even the results pointing to selection effects, however, can be important for companies, since offering stock ownership opportunities to employees may be an effective way to identify which employees are most committed to the firm and are likely to become good corporate citizens.

This chapter investigates the differences in share-plan participation among various employee groups and why these differences exist. For strategic and tactical reasons, inequality may result from an employer’s choice to distinguish among groups when allocating or offering shares. Differences among groups are also based on employee preferences. In addition, differences may be caused by social stratification, which limits access to plans for certain groups. Using these three perspectives, this study found important demographic differences in participation and received benefits. The study revealed that employers tend to focus on high-level personnel. It also found that employees may differ in how knowledgeable they are regarding share plans and how they value the usefulness of participating in share schemes.