IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/snbeco/v2y2022i12d10.1007_s43546-022-00363-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

European Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): the main structural features and pilot implementation in Slovenia

Author

Listed:
  • David Ellerman

    (University of Ljubljana)

  • Tej Gonza

    (University of Ljubljana
    Institute for Economic Democracy)

  • Gregor Berkopec

    (Institute for Economic Democracy)

Abstract

The American Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP is a leveraged buyout mechanism so that the employees in a company can, in effect, do a leveraged buyout of part or eventually all of their own company. ESOP is one of the most successful and unifying models for employee ownership in the world. Europe, however, lacks a generic model that could help the fragmented attempts at promoting employee ownership. The method used in the paper is a qualitative analysis of the US ESOP. We find that there are certain central features to the US model that should be maintained in the European attempts, and that there are certain flawed features that should be replaced by a better legal-organizational structure. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main features of the US ESOP model and to define a technical description of the European ESOP, which builds on the good features of the US model and improves the flawed features. The paper also introduces the Slovenian pilot implementation of the European ESOP. The implication of the paper is to provide clarity on the structural features of the dominant employee ownership models, and to inform policy makers promoting employee ownership in Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • David Ellerman & Tej Gonza & Gregor Berkopec, 2022. "European Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): the main structural features and pilot implementation in Slovenia," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(12), pages 1-20, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:snbeco:v:2:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s43546-022-00363-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s43546-022-00363-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43546-022-00363-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s43546-022-00363-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kruse, Douglas L. & Freeman, Richard B. & Blasi, Joseph R. (ed.), 2010. "Shared Capitalism at Work," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226056951, October.
    2. Joseph Blasi & Richard Freeman & Douglas Kruse, 2016. "Do Broad-based Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and Stock Options Help the Best Firms Do Even Better?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 54(1), pages 55-82, March.
    3. Gregory K. DOW, 2018. "The Theory Of The Labor-Managed Firm: Past, Present, And Future," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(1), pages 65-86, March.
    4. repec:bla:annpce:v:89:y:2018:i:1:p:65-86 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. E. Han Kim & Paige Ouimet, 2014. "Broad-Based Employee Stock Ownership: Motives and Outcomes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(3), pages 1273-1319, June.
    6. Arnaud Chevalier, 2022. "Does employee ownership improve performance?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 311-311, May.
    7. Dow,Gregory K., 2019. "The Labor-Managed Firm," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107589650, January.
    8. Douglas L. Kruse & Richard B. Freeman & Joseph R. Blasi, 2010. "Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number krus08-1, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2024. "Dividends, labor remuneration, and capitalization in worker cooperatives. Worker shareholding," MPRA Paper 122500, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kyoung Yong Kim & Pankaj C. Patel, 2020. "Broad‐Based Employee Ownership and Labour Productivity During the 2008 Recession: Evidence from Public Firms in Europe," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(2), pages 396-423, June.
    2. Kyoung Yong Kim & Pankaj C. Patel, 2021. "A Multilevel Contingency Model of Employee Ownership and Firm Productivity: The Moderating Roles of Industry Growth and Instability," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 625-648, May.
    3. Park, Heejin & Noh, Jung-Hee & Pedersen, Melissa & Lee, Sora, 2022. "What are the determinants and managerial motivations for employee ownership in retirement pension plans?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    4. Kruse, Douglas L. & Blasi, Joseph & Weltmann, Dan & Kang, Saehee & Kim, Jung Ook & Castellano, William, 2019. "Do Employee Share Owners Face Too Much Financial Risk?," IZA Discussion Papers 12303, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Arnaud Chevalier, 2022. "Does employee ownership improve performance?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 311-311, May.
    6. Douglas Kruse & Joseph Blasi & Dan Weltmann & Saehee Kang & Jung Ook Kim & William Castellano, 2022. "Do Employee Share Owners Face Too Much Financial Risk?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(3), pages 716-740, May.
    7. Dow,Gregory K., 2019. "The Labor-Managed Firm," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107589650, January.
    8. Kim, Kyoung Yong & Patel, Pankaj C., 2017. "Employee ownership and firm performance: A variance decomposition analysis of European firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 248-254.
    9. Abdelnour Joseph & Aubert Nicolas & Campa Domenico, 2022. "Does employee ownership decrease agency costs? Evidence from French listed companies [L'actionnariat salarié réduit-il les coûts d'agence? Le cas des entreprises françaises cotées]," Post-Print hal-03723164, HAL.
    10. Pablo Blanchard & Gabriel Burdín & Andrés Dean, 2023. "Property Rights and Effort Supply," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 23-01, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    11. Stefania Cardinaleschi & Mirella Damiani & Fabrizio Pompei, 2020. "Knowledge-intensive sectors and the role of collective performance-related pay," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 480-512, May.
    12. Vladimir Pecheu, 2021. "Profit Sharing as a Bargaining Weapon Against Unions," Working Papers halshs-03247551, HAL.
    13. Alexandre Garel & Arthur Petit-Romec, 2021. "Engaging Employees for the Long Run: Long-Term Investors and Employee-Related CSR," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 35-63, November.
    14. Uwe Jirjahn, 2018. "The adoption and termination of profit sharing for employees: does management’s attitude play a role?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 108-127, January.
    15. Prince, Nicholas R. & Bruce Prince, J. & Kabst, Rüediger, 2020. "National culture and incentives: Are incentive practices always good?," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(3).
    16. Nicolas Aubert & Alexander Kern & Xavier Hollandts, 2017. "Employee stock ownership and the cost of capital," Post-Print halshs-01502001, HAL.
    17. Anne-Laure P. Winkler & Jill A. Brown & David L. Finegold, 2019. "Employees as Conduits for Effective Stakeholder Engagement: An Example from B Corporations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(4), pages 913-936, December.
    18. Ermanno C., Tortia, 2018. "A comparative institutional approach to co-operative self-finance: locked assets, divisible and indivisible reserves," MPRA Paper 89121, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Hristos Doucouliagos & Patrice Laroche & Douglas L. Kruse & T. D. Stanley, 2020. "Is Profit Sharing Productive? A Meta‐Regression Analysis," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(2), pages 364-395, June.
    20. Hongfeng Sun & Chang Liu, 2023. "Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-19, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employee Stock Ownership Plan; ESOP; Employee ownership;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J54 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General
    • P13 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Cooperative Enterprises

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:snbeco:v:2:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s43546-022-00363-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.