Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing

Models, Incidence, and Sectors

Joseph Blasi, Jonathan Michie (Oxford University, UK)

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English

Routledge
04 August 2025

Occupational & industrial psychology; Management accounting & bookkeeping; Personnel & human resources management; Employment & labour law; Equity & trusts

This book explores a quiet revolution reshaping global capitalism: the rise of employee ownership, worker cooperatives, and profit-sharing enterprises. With 17% of US adult workers now holding equity in their companies, a new Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) being established daily in the UK, a mature sector thriving in France, extensive tax incentives in Canada, the continued development of several mature worker cooperative sectors worldwide such as Mondragon, and interest in many other nations, shared ownership is no longer a fringe idea.

Authored by leading researchers, this volume presents 16 studies on how equity and profit shares for workers operate—exploring their impact on employees’ lives, firm performance, local communities, the racial wealth gap, and the determinants that drive success or failure in such enterprises. This volume is one of the first to examine the emergence of businesses that share financial results with workers as a global phenomenon; it positions this model as a significant development in postindustrial capitalism. With a strong grounding in theory, and a coherent conceptual framework to explain observed behaviors and responses of workers, managers, and firms, this volume offers evidence-based insights that should influence policy in countries around the world.

This book will be essential reading for scholars and students in economics, sociology, business, public policy, labor studies, and organizational theory, as well as for policymakers, practitioners, and advocates interested in building more equitable and resilient economies.

The chapters in this book were first published in the International Review of Applied Economics.

Edited by: Joseph Blasi, Jonathan Michie (Oxford University, UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 246mm, Width: 174mm,
ISBN: 9781041122104
ISBN 10: 1041122101
Pages: 326
Publication Date: 04 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction: The theory and practice of employee ownership 1. Meta economics: generating moral economies 2. Continental ambivalence toward employee ownership: philosophical and historical interpretations 3. Automation, artificial intelligence and capital concentration – A race for the machine 4. Defending and expanding industrial democracy and worker cooperatives in an age of neoliberal globalisation 5. Employee ownership trusts: an employee ownership success story? 6. A critical analysis of different forms of employee ownership 7. Profit Sharing in Practice: Its Prevalence and Influence on Job Satisfaction Controlling for Workplace Amenities 8. The first study of majority employee-owned enterprises in the U.S.: an historical retrospective analysis 9. Explaining the rarity gap of worker cooperatives between France and Italy 10. Development of employee financial participation schemes in EU member states and their impact on firm performance: new evidence using European Company Surveys 11. Where employee ownership works best 12. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) as social enterprise 13. Employee ownership for union workers: positive outcomes and negative perceptions 14. Ecosystem supports for incarcerated worker co-ops 15. How do platform co-ops work? Social empowerment challenges from the implementation of CoopCycle in Argentina 16. Cash profit sharing and labour productivity in family firms: Exploring the effects of R&D and capital intensities

Joseph Blasi is the J. Robert Beyster Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. He is an economic sociologist, and his work includes economic sociology, social and economic history, and public policy, particularly focused on the issue of capital shares, profit sharing, gain sharing, and stock options in corporations, across countries, industries, and regions. Jonathan Michie is Professor of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford, where he is also President of Kellogg College. He is the Director of the Centre on Mutual & Co-owned Business, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and was awarded an OBE for his services to education and lifelong learning. He is the Managing Editor of the International Review of Applied Economics, and Chair of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning.