ABSTRACT Coworker helping is a discretionary workplace behavior that contributes to organizational performance but carries private costs to helpers. We develop a simple theoretical model showing that group-based compensation increases helping effort relative to individual piece-rates and test these predictions using a controlled laboratory experiment that collects direct observations of coworker helping. Our experimental design features a novel real-effort task where subjects complete work independently or with real-time help from an anonymously paired coworker. Subjects were randomly assigned to either an individual piece-rate or a group compensation scheme. The results from the study demonstrate that subjects in the group compensation scheme exhibited both requesting and providing help at substantially higher rates than those under individual piece-rates. After controlling for gender and personality characteristics, helping behavior was nearly three times greater under group compensation. These findings provide direct experimental evidence confirming longstanding theoretical predictions about compensation structure and coworker helping and offer methodological insights for future research on interpersonal helping behaviors in organizational settings.

ABSTRACT By analyzing panel data for firms in three separate industries and also using multiple measures of employee ownership and profit sharing, often we find that both employee share ownership and profit sharing with employees significantly increase firm productivity. Additionally, employee representation on the board has never had a significant impact one way or the other on enterprise productivity. In some cases, we also find that worker ownership and profit sharing are complements. Our findings vary across industries and point to the potential importance of industry-specific factors such as differences in size and capital intensity in accounting for this variation in findings. However, we also present results that indicate that worker ownership and profit sharing have independent effects and, in a few instances, worker ownership reduces the effectiveness of profit sharing (and vice versa).

ABSTRACT Employee ownership has received sustained attention in relation to wage stagnation, inequality, and firm continuity. While a growing body of empirical research suggests that employee-owned firms can perform as well as, and in some cases better than, conventionally owned firms, employee ownership remains relatively uncommon in the United States. This article examines employee ownership as a problem of adoption and diffusion rather than performance alone. Drawing on institutional economics, historical analysis, and insights from human capital development, the article advances three central arguments. First, it distinguishes ownership from compensation, emphasizing the mechanisms through which these arrangements shape organizational behavior, time horizons, and long-term outcomes. Second, it examines the historical role of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as an important institutional innovation while highlighting the limitations of treating a single ownership form as representative of employee ownership more broadly. Third, it introduces homeownership as an analytic framework for understanding employee ownership as a form of work-based asset accumulation and argues that effective ownership participation depends on learned economic capabilities supported by institutional complements such as education and cognitive framing. By focusing on institutional diversity, learning, and legitimacy, this analysis extends the employee ownership literature beyond questions of efficacy.

ABSTRACT This paper examines how worker characteristics, job characteristics, and government’s response in terms of lockdown stringency, health, and economic support measures are associated with employment retention and recovery in urban India during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a quarterly panel data from the nationally representative Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) covering four consecutive quarters from October to December quarter in 2019 (pre-pandemic) to July to September quarter in 2020 (three consecutive quarters during the pandemic). We merge urban panel data from the PLFS with the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker’s indices, which estimate the severity of containment policies and economic support at the state level. Employing the Heckman-Probit model to correct for selection bias, our findings add to the ongoing, emerging literature on how COVID-19 impacted short-term employment outcomes in developing economies. Conditional on being employed in the pre-pandemic quarter, we find that employment outcomes in terms of retaining the job throughout the three consecutive quarters during the pandemic and recovering from a job loss by the end of the quarter ending in September 2020 were significantly shaped by gender, educational attainment, skill levels, job characteristics, and the intensity of government policy responses.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the implications of implementing a comprehensive dividend-based remuneration system for members of worker cooperatives, which could be uniquely linked to the financial position of worker-members as owners of the cooperative’s capital. The alignment of interests between worker members and non-member financial investors is considered a necessary condition for the creation of a cooperative share market. Decoupling the financial ownership of members and non-members from control rights would safeguard the formal and substantive role of the democratic ‘one member, one vote’ principle in mutual aid enterprises from influences arising from share ownership. Various issues relating to the issuance and ownership of cooperative shares are discussed, including their impact on the economic and financial well-being of members, allocation rules, distributive issues, the payment of dividends, as well as the degeneration of the cooperative form of enterprise in the presence of tradable shares.

ABSTRACT Employee stock ownership and other forms of shared capitalism are widely studied as mechanisms for improving firm performance, employee engagement, and workplace stability. Far less attention has been paid to how these arrangements affect internal control systems, which play a central role in safeguarding assets, governing organizational reliability, risk management, and financial reporting quality. This paper develops a conceptual framework linking shared capitalism to internal control by viewing internal control as an applied economic institution within the firm. Using the COSO internal control framework, the analysis identifies mechanisms through which employee ownership influences the control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring. The framework highlights both strengthening effects—such as psychological ownership, employee voice, and peer monitoring—and potential challenges, including optimism bias, collusion, and collective monitoring problems. By integrating insights from economics, governance, and organizational research, the paper contributes to applied economic research on employee stock ownership and provides a foundation for future empirical work examining how shared capitalism shapes internal governance and organizational outcomes.

ABSTRACT A ‘not-for-profit organisation’ is a broad term for all independent organisations whose purpose is something other than to make private profit for members. Nevertheless, paying a workforce is permitted. Much of the good work of not-for-profits would otherwise be impossible. A growing body of research shows employee ownership has wide-ranging benefits including delivering on an organisation’s objectives. This and other evidence suggest regulators and trade bodies should endorse employee ownership of not-for-profits, to enhance their social outcomes, and as part of this to support all-employee surplus sharing consistent with employee ownership good practice. Concerns that having surplus-sharing in a not-for-profit model may detract from its social purpose, are allayed by EOT ownership. The fiduciary duties on the trustee of the EOT will ensure fairness and proportionality in the use of surpluses between social purpose and incentivising and rewarding a workforce. The EOT model is even more straightforward to implement in not-for-profits, than when used as a business succession solution, meaning ease of adoption.

ABSTRACT Employee ownership (EO) is an increasingly visible part of the UK economy and is often associated with higher productivity, resilience, and stronger employee engagement. Evidence from research and practice, however, suggests these outcomes do not flow automatically from changing ownership structures. They depend on a distinctive set of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours – an ‘EO Mindset’. This paper introduces and critically examines the EO Mindset developed by the Employee Ownership Association (eoa) as a practical and theoretical framework for understanding what it means to be an employee owner. Drawing on mixed-methods evidence from the EO Knowledge Programme, including interviews with senior decision-makers and employee owners, plus survey data and behavioural insights from the Good Employee Ownership report, the paper develops an integrated behavioural model grounded in the belief that employees are key stakeholders in organisational success and wellbeing. This belief is expressed through five keystone principles: shared responsibility, business literacy, collaboration, continuous learning, and understanding and championing EO. The paper situates the model within wider scholarship on psychological ownership, self-determination, identity at work, stewardship theory, participatory governance, and behavioural change, explains its development, explores applications for employee-owned businesses, leadership development and policy, and proposes an agenda for future empirical research.

ABSTRACT There are strong variations between countries concerning the frequency of different types of employee-owned firms. This relates to differences in the institutional settings – legislation related to employee ownership. However, the resources and attitudes of different stakeholders are also important. This concerns primarily the employees, but for employee takeovers the former owners also play a key role. To solve the capital problem external capital providers are also important stakeholders. The drivers of the stakeholders depend on their resources and their attitude to employee ownership with a distinction between individual and collective goals. The paper outlines a theory about how individual or collective attitudes result in different drivers in relation to different types of employee ownership, which are dominating in countries with a relatively many employee-owned firms: 1) The worker cooperative as known from Italy, France, and Spain including the Mondragon variant with a strong emphasis on employees’ individual accounts. 2) The British Employee Ownership Trust, EOT. 3) The US Employee Stock Ownership Plan, ESOP. The Slovenian type of Cooperative ESOP overlaps all three types. Denmark is used as a case to illustrate the theoretical points and the main features and possible consequences of a new law concerning employee takeovers are presented.