Profit Sharing and Employee Share Ownership in Ireland: A New Departure?

Abstract

Recently, it has been argued that contemporary conditions facilitating the growth of profit sharing and employee share ownership schemes represent a fundamental break with the past. The contemporary combination of government, employer and union support for profit sharing schemes amounts, it has been suggested, to a series of ‘favourable conjunctures’. These conjunctures are viewed as constituting a break with the previous cyclical pattern. Given Irish government, employer and trade union support for profit sharing, Ireland appears as an excellent exemplar of ‘favourable conjunctures’. Using the Irish example, the authors test a number of hypotheses including the favourable conjunctures thesis to explain the trend in profit sharing schemes. Although there was a dramatic increase in the adoption of profit sharing/employee shareholding schemes during the 1990s, this subsequently declined. The Irish case suggests that the cyclical and contingent nature of profit sharing appears likely to persist.