Mitigating work alienation: what can we learn from employee ownership?

Abstract

Work alienation, driven by powerlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation, and self-estrangement, negatively affects job performance and wellbeing. Yet it remains under-researched. This paper elaborates on alienation theory by exploring it in a novel context – employee-owned firms – and contributes to employee ownership, psychosocial work environment, and employee relations literature. Based on interviews with 33 employees, we reveal structural, psychological, and cultural characteristics that suppress alienation. Psychological and structural empowerment create perceptions of powerfulness. Psychological ownership, effort-reward balance, and prosocial values provide meaningfulness. Community, equality, and inclusive discourse lead to belonging, while personal development, ethic of care, and authenticity drive self-realization. Since these characteristics need not be exclusive to co-ownership, the study provides insights to conventional firms on how to foster organisational belonging. A further contribution to theory and practice is our identification of tensions inherent in co-ownership, arising from information sharing, decision-making, distributive justice, and organi­zational citizenship behaviour, that inadvertently drive alienation.