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Building on economic and psychological ownership theories, this study investigates whether group incentives can reduce shirking because these practices enable employees to feel psychological ownership that motivates them to prevent their own and coworkers shirking in a collective work setting. We analyzed a sample of 38,475 employees in eight companies that participated in the survey administered by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 2005. Our findings reveal that (1) short-term-oriented group incentives (STOGIs) and long-term-oriented group incentives (LTOGIs) are positively related to self-shirking regulation and coworker-shirking intervention; (2) STOGIs have stronger relationships with these anti-shirking outcomes than LTOGIs; and (3) the interaction between LTOGIs and formal training is positively related to these anti-shirking outcomes. Although some scholars are concerned about the free rider problem in the collective working and rewarding structure, our work demonstrates how and why employee shirking may be mitigated in such settings.

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.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the present state of employee ownership in Russia and reasons for its decline due to the drawbacks of economic reforms on the country.

The design of the article includes the analysis of the Russian model of ESOP and its differences from the U.S. analog. The author also describes the practical experience of the Russian people’s enterprises and the drawbacks in the legal foundations of their work.

The key finding of this work is that the correction of these drawbacks would lead to broader development of employee owned companies in Russia.

The author’s ideas of changing focus of the market reforms in Russia and facilitating the development of economic democracy in the country constitute the major social implication of her research.

It may have practical implications both for developed market economies and economies in transition.

The originality of the paper is determined by drawing a logical link between the development of employee ownership and overall market reform in Russia, as well as by presenting a comparative analysis of the U.S. and Russian models of ESOP.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the additive and differential effects of short-term-oriented group incentives (STOGIs) and long-term-oriented group incentives (LTOGIs) on psychological ownership and organizational commitment.

This study analyzed data from 17,255 US employees in the 2005 data set of the National Bureau of Economic Research Shared Capitalism Research.

Both additive indices of group incentives have direct positive relationships with psychological ownership and organizational commitment, as well as indirect positive relationships with organizational commitment through psychological ownership. STOGIs have a stronger relationship with organizational commitment and LTOGIs have a stronger relationship with psychological ownership.

The value of this research lies in exploring the differential effects of short-and long-term group incentives, which provides new insight into the theory of group incentives and practical implications for their effective utilization.