The Fit of Employee Ownership with Other Human Resource Management Practices: Theoretical and Empirical Suggestions Regarding the Existence of an Ownership High-Performance Work System

Abstract

This article embeds employee ownership within a strategic human resource management (SHRM) framework, and in so doing, aims to redress in part a lack of attention in previous employee ownership and SHRM literatures. The study extends the configurational approach to SHRM to include the construct of the workforce philosophy as the factor that determines the coherence of HRM systems. Companies that have employee ownership as a central element and core HRM practice should do two things in order to ensure that their HRM system is coherent and potentially a high-performance work system (HPWS). First, these firms should propagate the idea that employees deserve to be co-owners and take employees seriously as such. Second, the HRM system should reflect this workforce philosophy: the HRM system should contain HRM practices that mirror the rights that make up the very construct of ‘ownership’. The core HRM practices of the ‘ownership-HPWS’, in addition to employee ownership, are: participation in decision-making, profit sharing, information sharing, training for business literacy and mediation.