How society’s constraints would undermine ESPP adaption in Latin America: The Case of Peru

This chapter aims to discuss how business culture prompted by a particular type of capitalism in Latin America undermines the context characteristics, leaving an unfertile terrain that would constraint and impedes employee stock ownership mechanisms to develop. Moreover, the chapter will describe the case of Peru, a Latin American country rooted in unequal social systems, exploring how difficult the adoption of employee stock ownership for local firms would be, and how MNCs' subsidiaries could represent the turn of the tide, leading the development of ESO mechanisms in the Peruvian financial market. Even if the legal and fiscal policy do not incentivize ESO, we found that several foreign companies offer their Peruvian employees to invest in their stock. US and French companies with a strong ESO culture offered ESOP or ESPP to their employees, developing it as an attractive financial instrument to deal with local uncertainty. Employee stock purchase plans are employers' sponsored offers aimed at developing employee stock ownership usually in large listed companies. Thus, ESPPs allow employees to invest in their company stocks, providing access to the company's ownership structure and overcoming social inequalities in Peru. Finally, MNCs were able to mobilize their global ESO strategy into local operations such as Peruvian subsidiaries, overcoming the barrier of employees' trust, through the implementation of strategic efforts focused on socializing knowledge, diffusing valuable information, and developing an investment long-term perspective. This paper investigates the implementation conditions of these plans in Peru.