Employee Ownership

The privatization revolution, profit or revenue sharing, and employee participation in enterprise decision making are some of the major characteristics of modern capitalism. Such features can be observed in almost all countries, including Western developed, Third World, and primarily ex-socialist countries. The diffusion of stock ownership, the promotion of economic and industrial democracy, and the globalization of production and finance present new challenges and opportunities and reflect important structural economic and political changes. This book examines all these issues and provides valuable information and suggestions for labor-management relations and international business cooperation.

This book, written by the leading experts in the field, offers a comprehensive look at the factors behind the remarkable growth in employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in public companies over the past few years. The contributors discuss the legal and financial structure, actual uses, and practical implications of ESOPs in publicly held companies, demonstrating how ESOPs can be an effective means of both improving corporate performance and discouraging hostile takeovers. Particular attention is given to the actual impact of ESOPs on companies, shareholders, employees, and taxpayers.

Arguing that socialism could return to the center of political life in advanced capitalist countries, this book aims to convince socialists and nonsocialists alike that there is both a strong moral case for economic democracy and a feasible strategy for achieving it. The author defines economic democracy as a system in which firms operate in a market economy but are governed by their workers. He shows that it appeals to the value of individual freedom while retaining the advantages of a corporatist industrial relations system. This work will be of interest to scholars of political theory, sociology, economics, and industrial relations.

Using data from a study of employee-owned companies in Ohio, this book offers an empirical portrait of firms with Employee Stock Ownership Plans. The authors examine firms that have succeeded in employment owmership and those with failed plans.

This reference provides policymakers, practitioners, and scholars with important work on the latest developments in new technology and macropolitical organization. The contributors, eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines and countries, examine the economic, political, and sociocultural forces which have brought about new developments and a potential future for organizational democracy around the world.

Stryjan's notable study outlines a new theoretical perspective on self-managed organizations based on the perception that, in this instance, theory best proceeds from organizational practices as they are applied in such organizations. The work describes the functioning of and the pre-conditions for successful self-management and reproduction. Examples deal primarily with worker cooperatives and to a lesser extent with two closely related clusters of organizations: worker-owned enterprises and Israeli kibbutzism. All three organizational types have clear, formally defined bodies of members who take part, actually or potentially, in making and implementing decisions; the basis for all decisions is situated within the organization.

This book is the first to fully examine the many recent financial innovations that have blended the traits of debt and equity and created the hybrid security known as dequity. Chen and Kensinger detail the various forms of dequity, describing its characteristics, how it evolved, how it's being used, and what the future may hold for it. They point to three revolutionary changes that have accompanied dequity: increased equity ownership by employees, the transfer of control of corporate resources from managers to lenders, and a shift toward direct ownership of productive assets by investors.