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Discusses a programme embarked upon by Exel Logistics aimed at improving the effectiveness of the drivers engaged in one of its major store delivery contracts. Examines the Standard Hour Plan developed by DMA (the specialist consultants involved) and how the programme specifically met the needs of that particular contract.

CEO incentive contracts are commonplace in China but their incidence varies significantly across Chinese cities. We show that city and provincial policy experiments help explain this variance. We examine the role of two policy experiments: the use of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and the privatisation of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). The introduction of SEZs is found to be uncorrelated with the prevalence of CEO incentive contracts. However, firms are more likely to use such contracts in areas that saw rapid SOE privatisation, irrespective of the firm’s own current ownership status and irrespective of the size of the SOE sector in the late 1970s. The positive effect of privatisation is robust to various estimation techniques and model specifications. These findings suggest that domestic privatisation policies have been more influential than FDI in driving the expansion of incentive contracts in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the incidence of employee financial participation (EFP) schemes in Europe and examine the factors that influence the likelihood of (i) a company offering EFP schemes and (ii) employees taking up EFP schemes.

Using a combination of descriptive and econometric techniques, the paper provides information on the incidence of EFP schemes in the EU and profiles a typical company and a typical employee that, respectively, offers and takes up EFP schemes. The empirical investigation is based on two models employing probabilistic techniques. Data used for this analysis include the European Company Survey (ECS) conducted in 2009 and three rounds of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2009.

Results display a significant rise in EFP in the EU-27 in the last decade. In addition, results seem to suggest that the employees’ and companies’ characteristics, as well as sector and region of operation explain some of the variation in likelihoods of companies and employees, respectively, offering and taking up EFP schemes.

Due to data limitation, our analysis lacks a dynamic assessment of the relationship between parameters. Studies that exploit longitudinal data are suggested to follow this paper.

This paper contributes to the existing empirical literature by examining jointly the determinants of financial participation from both employers’ and employees’ perspective.

This chapter analyzes the determinants of adoption of sharing arrangements by companies. Using propositions from agency and strategic human resource management frameworks predicting the adoption of sharing arrangements, we test the relationships with a large international dataset. The study finds that adoption of sharing arrangements is related to human capital investments, individual incentives, involvement practices, and human resource management practices and that adoption is affected by country differences.

By construction, income inequality measures employed in well-being analysis presume all individual differences to be deleterious to the social good. Yet some differences, for example, those acceptable to all and necessary for optimal resource allocation in producing that well-being, are demonstrably beneficial. Measured inequality is an amalgam of both deleterious or ‘Bad’ and beneficial or ‘Good’ differences, and from both policy and well-being measurement perspectives, distinguishing between types with measures fit for purpose makes sense, especially if the types are taking different paths. Here, as an exemplar, the distinction is explored in considering the progress of human resource, gender, and immigrant status-based personal income differences in twenty-first-century Canada. Categorising human resource-based differences as efficiency promoting ‘Good’ inequalities and gender and immigrant status-based differences as discriminatory and ‘Bad’ reveals that, under all proposed measures, while aggregate and ‘Good’ inequality grew over the sample period, ‘Bad’ inequality diminished, reinforcing the case for inequality measures that are fit for purpose.

Using a population study, we provide evidence on the important but understudied issue of company survival under employee ownership, as well as on the performance effects of employee ownership and the issue of whether employee ownership substitutes for other pension benefits.

Company survival and pension benefits are assessed using a unique dataset from Dun & Bradstreet of privately held Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) companies over the 1988–1999 period, matched to non-ESOP companies in the same industry. Performance is assessed using pre/post-comparisons of ESOP adopters in the 1988–1994 period.

Privately held ESOP companies in 1988 were only half as likely as non-ESOP firms to go bankrupt or close over the 1988–1999 period, and only three-fifths as likely to disappear for any reason. The ESOP companies had significantly higher post-adoption annual employment and sales growth, along with higher sales per employee. ESOP companies are four times more likely than their non-ESOP pairs to have defined benefit pension plan and other forms of defined contribution plans.

The greater survival was not explained by higher productivity, or by greater compensation flexibility. The higher survival may instead be tied to complementary policies adopted along with ESOPs to create a more committed and engaged workforce that contributes ideas to enhance survival and is more flexible when economic difficulties arise. The pension results are consistent with other studies on compensation under employee ownership, suggesting that employee ownership is generally used as a form of efficiency wage to provide above-market compensation.

Higher survival among ESOP companies could result in lower job loss and unemployment, potentially providing a public policy rationale for support of employee ownership.

The chapter provides the first examination of company survival in privately held ESOP companies, and one of the few examinations of how ESOPs relate to other pension benefits.

This chapter is aimed at filling two important gaps in the large literature on high-involvement work system (HIWS). First, the existing literature tends to focus on North America and Western Europe, and detailed information on HIWS outside of the two regions (especially Asia) is still limited. Second, while there is a large body of quantitative evidence, the literature is relatively scant on detailed account of exactly how specific HIWS practices are implemented in the real workplace. This chapter draws on our extensive field research at firms in Japan, the United States, and Korea, and presents real-world examples of HIWS of firms in Japan, Korea, and the United States. Our detailed account of the implementation of HIWS in the three countries points to an intriguing process of transnational diffusion of HIWS. Japanese firms as early experimenters of HIWS posed a challenge to U.S. firms in the global marketplace, resulting in the trans-pacific diffusion of HIWS which is modified to the U.S. corporate culture. Due to its geographical proximity and historical connections to Japan, Korean firms were initially heavily influenced by Japanese HIWS. However, with the rising link to the United States and Europe, Japanese influence appears to have been waning, and interest in U.S. style HIWS and European-style state-mandated works council has risen, suggesting that a hybrid model may be emerging in Korea.

Past research has found employee ownership to be linked to better attitudes and behaviors. We investigate three possible mechanisms: (a) a selection effect – employees who buy stock in their own company may have better attitudes to begin with; (b) a status effect – employees who have any amount of employee ownership may have better attitudes; and (c) a size of stake effect – employee attitudes and behaviors may be influenced by the size of their employee ownership stake. We used a rich database of over 40,000 employee surveys from one large multinational company and 13 other companies. We find some support for all three mechanisms. Selection effects are indicated by several positive relationships between attitudes and stock that is bought by the employees rather than being granted by the employer. Status and size of stake effects are indicated by several positive relationships between attitudes and stock that is granted by the employer, particularly when the employee ownership is accompanied by high-performance work policies. While dividing employee ownership into bought or granted stock sheds light on the selection issue, the data are cross-sectional so selection and causality cannot be firmly established. There is need for further research on selection versus causality in examining the effects of employee ownership. The results indicate that companies may improve employee attitudes and behaviors of people by granting them stock and by having opportunities for employees to purchase stock. Even the results pointing to selection effects, however, can be important for companies, since offering stock ownership opportunities to employees may be an effective way to identify which employees are most committed to the firm and are likely to become good corporate citizens.

This chapter investigates the differences in share-plan participation among various employee groups and why these differences exist. For strategic and tactical reasons, inequality may result from an employer’s choice to distinguish among groups when allocating or offering shares. Differences among groups are also based on employee preferences. In addition, differences may be caused by social stratification, which limits access to plans for certain groups. Using these three perspectives, this study found important demographic differences in participation and received benefits. The study revealed that employers tend to focus on high-level personnel. It also found that employees may differ in how knowledgeable they are regarding share plans and how they value the usefulness of participating in share schemes.