The Impact of Employee Share Ownership on Worker Attitudes. A Longitudinal Case Study

In spite of the proliferation of employee share ownership in the UK over the last 10 years, there are still relatively few studies seeking to evaluate its effects. The present paper reports a longitudinal case study of worker attitudes. Our focus is whether there was any attitude change over period of twelve months following the introduction of employee share ownership in a particular establishment. Our control group was those who chose not to join the scheme; we were therefore looking for a differential change in attitudes between joiners and non-joiners. We conclude that there was no change in attitudes which should be attributed to the scheme. On the basis of this single case study, we are cautious about generalising on the impact of employee share option schemes, but two propositions have significance. First, our results are an important qualification to those from some of the earlier case studies in the literature on employee attitudinal responses to share ownership schemes. Second, our longitudinal research method gave us insights on the patterns of attitudinal dynamics that the more usual research approach would not have revealed.