Productivity effects of the ownership concentration in Polish employee–owned companies

Research background: The conducted empirical research on the influence of the degree of ownership concentration in the employee–owned companies on their sales revenues thematically fits into the issue of efficiency of the direct privatisation method, in particular giving a state–owned enterprise for use against payment. Purpose of the article: The main goal of this article is to verify the research hypothesis stating that in employee–owned companies an increase in the degree of ownership concentration leads to an increase in sales revenues. Methods: The empirical studies were carried out on a sample of 15 employee-owned companies from Mazowieckie Province, which concluded the agreement of giving a state–owned enterprise for use against payment from 2000 to 2004 and using the data from financial statements handed in by these entities to the National Court Register for a ten–year period after the privatisation year. The verification of research hypothesis was based on the estimation of a Cobb–Douglas production function by Ordinary Least Squares method for two variants, differing in the way of measuring the degree of ownership concentration in investigated employee–owned companies. Findings & Value added: The research hypothesis formulated in this paper was verified negatively as the increase in the degree of ownership concentration in employee–owned companies caused the decrease in their sales revenues. The conducted empirical research also suggests that sales revenues in examined employee–owned companies peak at some intermediate/optimal level of ownership concentration.