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This paper examines the extent to which investment in human capital (HC) influences employee well-being, focusing on companies in the Basque Country in Northern Spain. Specifically, it analyzes the effects of worker perceptions of high-involvement work system (HIWS) on job satisfaction (JS) and affective commitment (AC), directly and through the mediating role of trust in management. This trust mediating role was also explored by analyzing the isolated effects of high-involvement work processes (power, information, reward and knowledge [PIRK] enhancing practices) on JS and AC.

The structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was used on a sample of 2,199 employees from 425 organizations working in different industries. As the study was performed at the organizational level, aggregation was conducted first.

The findings revealed that trust partially mediated the relationship between HIWS and JS, although AC was directly predicted by the system. In contrast, a trust mediating role was confirmed in the relationship between all PIRK processes, JS and AC.

This study highlights the “hinge” role of trust in linking high-involvement work practices (HIWPs) as an approach to assess HC in organizations and well-being at work. It further conceptualizes HIWS via a PIRK model and operationalizes it through systemic and dimensional approach.

To examine perceptions of organizational atmosphere and joint ownership in a firm in which capital ownership is broadly shared among members of its work force.

A questionnaire was administered with a sample of 123 people from a Mondragon cooperative firm, ULMA Architectural Solutions, and responses were analyzed using principal components’ analysis and regression techniques.

Two factors are found to play especially important roles in explaining perceptions: (1) work and management/supervisory practices, especially those relating to communication and participation in decisions in respondents’ immediate work area, and (2) job type (blue collar vs. white collar).

The study confirms earlier research on the broad centrality of participation and related practices to perceptions of work and the organization in employee ownership settings, while findings focus on the immediate work environment and relationships with immediate managers for blue-collar workers.

These are closely related to the research implications, underlining the importance to worker-owners, in manufacturing contexts, of communication and involvement in decisions in their immediate work environment.

Widespread concerns about inequality, poor working conditions, and competitiveness suggest the importance of investigating enterprises with broadly shared capital ownership, enterprises that tend to address these concerns.

The chapter reinforces the fundamental roles of information-sharing and participation in enterprises with shared ownership, while making key distinctions between shopfloor and office workers experiences and perceptions.