Financial participation

In 1995-96, 740,000 UK employees were covered by Inland Revenue-approved profit-sharing schemes and 610,000 were granted share options under registered Save-As-You-Earn share option schemes.¹ A 1998 study by Proshare, the not-for-profit organisation established to promote wider share ownership, found that more than two-thirds of UK companies, including 90% of plcs, offered some form of employee share ownership scheme.² Major companies such as Asda, Barclays Bank, Bass, BAT, British Aerospace, BT, GlaxoWellcome, Marks & Spencer, NatWest, Sainsbury's and Tesco offered one or the other, or both types of financial involvement.³

Elsewhere, US employees controlled around 8.3% ($663 billion) of total corporate equity through employee stock option plans (ESOPs), 401(k) (see glossary) and profit-sharing schemes and other broad stock ownership measures in 1997.⁴ American companies with such schemes include the parcel delivery business UPS, in which employees own more than half of company stock through a 401(k) plan, and United Airlines, the world's largest air carrier, the majority of whose staff purchased a controlling 55% of corporate equity via an ESOP in 1994.⁵ The list of US corporations offering stock options to all their employees includes Amgen, Cisco Systems, First Tennessee Bank, General Mills, W L Gore, Great Plains Software, McCormick, Merck and Procter & Gamble.⁶

In Japan, 91% of all companies listed on the Japanese stock market in 1988 had an ESOP, including almost all those in the air transport, financial services and retail sectors.⁷ In Sweden, 20% of private sector white-collar staff and more than 12% of manual workers were covered by profit-sharing arrangements in the late-1980s.⁸ In France, the number of employees subject to immediate profit sharing (intéressement des salariés) and deferred profit sharing (la participation des salariés aux résultats de l'enterprise) was more than five million in 1995.⁹

A host of new financial participation initiatives (see summary of different types in figure 2.1 ) have emerged to coincide with the new millennium. British Airways is offering its worldwide workforce the opportunity to participate in "the world's biggest Save-As-You-Earn" scheme, which matures in the year 2001. BA employees can buy discounted shares at the January 1998 price with the proceeds of their savings or opt to take the money, plus a tax-free bonus in cash.¹⁰ Vodafone, the mobile telephone business, announced the introduction of share options, internally referred to as the Millennium share options, for all its 6,500 UK employees in 1998. Every member of staff was to receive options to the value of at least half of their basic salary in July 1998, which can be exercised from July 2001.¹¹ Another innovation is that of Levi Strauss, the world's leading jean manufacturer, whose 37,000 worldwide workforce are in line for a one-off bonus payment, known as the Global Success Sharing Programme, equivalent to roughly a year's salary (as of 1996), should the company reach its $7.6 billion cash flow goal by the end of fiscal year 2001.¹²

Figure 2.1: Types of financial participation

Source: Adapted from Hyman J and Mason B (1995), Managing employee involvement and participation (Sage, London), p.98.

Management Review's own research found that almost 86% of survey respondents offered one or more of the common forms of financial participation (see figure 2.2 ). Aside from profit-related pay, which was the most popular form, in use by more than 68% of employers offering financial participation, we found the following schemes in operation:

Figure 2.2: Financial participation schemes in 54 organisations

MORE THAN A MONETARY REWARD?

It seems clear that in many instances financial participation schemes are little more than additional worker incentives whose attraction is the accompanying tax concessions. A 1996 study sponsored by actuaries and consultants Bacon & Woodrow supports this view. It found that employee profit-sharing and share ownership schemes among a sample of companies in the FTSE 100 index were "not being used as part of strategic human resources policies", leaving the authors to conclude that financial participation's "potential for improvements in motivation and productivity are not being tested".¹³ It was noted in chapter one that IR-registered PRP schemes have commonly been introduced to take advantage of the tax reliefs rather than wider company benefits such as greater employee motivation and commitment or perceived macroeconomic gains.

Our own findings reinforce this conclusion. Tax efficiency was far and away the most common reason for introducing PRP among our surveyed companies, cited by more than 78% of organisations with such schemes (see figure 2.3). The aim of increasing employee stakeholding/commitment to the organisation shared second place with the objective of reducing paybill costs (27% of respondents). Only 16% of employers surveyed actually hoped to increase profits through using PRP.

Figure 2.3: Employers' reasons for introducing profit-related pay

n = 37; respondents were able to give more than one answer.

Nevertheless, this is not the whole picture and the wider aims remain significant in many companies.

Aside from the tax incentives, there are four broad themes underpinning employers' reasons for establishing profit-sharing and employee share ownership schemes - participatory, philanthropic, incentive and opportunistic.

Participatory

There is the view that those who help to contribute to business success should share some of the rewards and, perhaps more significantly, that if employees accept this offer they should also be prepared to shoulder some of the risk. Profit sharing and share ownership can also increase business awareness among employees, who typically take a greater interest in the company's performance, and in some cases, most notably privatised organisations which were previously relatively immune to the pressures of profit making, financial participation can be important in achieving cultural change.

Philanthropic

Some businesses, including the notable example of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP), offer profit sharing and employee ownership for idealistic or philanthropic reasons. The philosophy underpinning JLP's ownership structure is that "partners see themselves as holding the business in trust from one generation to the next".¹⁴

Incentive

Other businesses introduce financial participation schemes mainly for, or are influenced by, purely pragmatic business reasons. One of these is recruitment and retention. Asda's all-employee share option plan, for example, is designed to reward loyalty, because, unlike its profit-sharing predecessor, only staff who stay for the full duration of the three-year scheme receive the options under the scheme.¹⁵ Similarly, Vodafone's share scheme is primarily about staff retention, particularly among the company's IT staff. Unlike its other employees, these will receive share options worth up to twice their salaries in the interests of encouraging loyalty.¹⁶ British Aerospace's 1997 annual report acknowledges that its SAYE schemes and new profit-sharing arrangement help to bring "fresh minds" to the company and can "attract the very best people, in all disciplines".¹⁷ CMG, the part employee-owned computer management company, also sees its employee ownership as something with which to attract new recruits. The company's job advertisements include the statement: "Cited as one of the top 100 companies to work for in the UK by McGraw Hill and named as one of the top three examples of successful employee ownership by think-tank Demos, 1997."¹⁸ According to one US consultancy, the offer of share options in tight labour markets "can make a significant difference as employers compete to recruit and to keep a high-quality workforce".¹⁹

Opportunistic

Share schemes which principally promote wider share ownership, such as employee share ownership plans (ESOPs), have specific business advantages in certain circumstances. ESOPs can create an internal share market in unlisted private companies or allow independent owners to realise some or all of their investment, or act as a mechanism for them to exit the business. They can also prevent a dilution of equity.²⁰ Employee buyouts also often rely on the ESOP mechanism to fund and distribute shares.²¹

That some employers are attracted to financial participation for reasons other than tax efficiency or its cost effectiveness is supported by research. Proshare's survey of 528 companies, for example, found that the four most commonly cited reasons for introducing employee share ownership schemes were: "to give employees a sense of involvement in the business" (64%); "to share rewards with employees" (58%); "to link employees and shareholder interests" (44%); and "to encourage employees to stay" (42%).²² In an earlier study of employers' reasons for establishing approved profit-sharing and SAYE share option schemes, jointly commissioned by the Inland Revenue, the Employment Department (now the Department for Education and Employment) and the Treasury (IR/ED/HMT), the three most important factors in descending order were: to increase employee involvement; to support recruitment and retention; and to increase the overall reward package.²³

The need for commitment, loyalty and motivation, the desire to attract and retain the right people and the need to align the interests of directors and shareholders are often the reasons given to justify the remuneration packages of the top management team.²⁴ It would appear that organisations are increasingly applying the same thinking to the rest of their workforce.

WHAT'S THE RETURN?

For employees, the rewards of financial participation can be substantial. Over the past three years, for example, Midland Bank's top performing staff - those rated as "good performers" or above - have received additional profit-sharing payments worth a cumulative 21% of salary (see figure 3.5, in Profit sharing).²⁵ Asda's Colleague Share Ownership Plan allocated its first tranche of shares on 20 July 1998 under an option scheme established in 1995. Over the three-year period, the share price has doubled, from 96p to around 206p, giving the 26,000 eligible staff an average free shareholding worth roughly £900.²⁶ A Lloyds Bank (now Lloyds TSB) employee participating in a five-year £35 a month Save-As-You-Earn (SAYE) share option scheme beginning in 1993 would have made a profit of more than £9,500, if he or she had sold the shares after the exercise date in June 1998 - based on a 1993 share price, less a 20% discount, of 155p. The latter price compares with a 14 July 1998 share value of around 862p. In addition, the employee would have received a tax-free saving's bonus of £437.50 from the 60-month SAYE contract.²⁷

Elsewhere, too, should Vodafone's share value over the next three years perform as well as it has done over the past decade, increasing on average by 25% each year, employees who take advantage of the company's Millennium share options will stand to gain significantly. Likewise, Levi's workforce could share some $750 million from the company's Global Success Sharing Programme. The recent rise in profit-sharing payments to staff of the John Lewis Partnership over the past decade is illustrated in figure 3.2 (in Profit sharing). It shows that a record sum equivalent to 22% of annual salary was paid to all the company's 37,500 "partners" (permanent employees) in 1998.²⁸

For employers, on the other hand, aside from the attractions of the tax incentives available on all Inland Revenue-approved schemes, the evidence as to benefits of financial participation - in terms of employee involvement and commitment, organisational performance and attitudinal change among staff - is somewhat mixed. This is particularly true of employee commitment and attitudinal change, with the signs suggesting that significant behavioural change is "open to some doubt".²⁹ The evidence of financial participation's impact on the financial performance of companies tends to be broadly positive, although there are cause and effect problems.

Leadbetter outlines six main claims made for employee share ownership and profit-sharing schemes:

The findings of some of the major studies into the impact on employees of share and profit-sharing schemes are summarised in figure 2.4, and a model illustrating how financial participation connects internal and external organisational factors and the outcomes it may produce can be found in figure 2.5.

Figure 2.4: Impact of profit-sharing and share ownership schemes on employees and employers: summary of 21 studies

Source: Based on Kelly J and Kelly C (1991), "'Them and us': social psychology and 'the new industrial relations'", British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol 29 (1), March, pp.25-48.

Figure 2.5: Impact of financial participation schemes

Source: Adapted from Poole M and Jenkins G (1990), The impact of economic democracy: profit-sharing and employee-shareholding schemes ( Routledge, London ) p.22

Employee involvement

The mainstream view of employee involvement in the fortunes of the company is that it sends staff a positive message: that their input matters. Employers hope that improved employee involvement will generate a reciprocal commitment to organisational success. Indeed, in the UK, the quest for employee involvement has become akin to the search for the Holy Grail since it was identified as a key element of the Japanese management philosophy, especially in relation to quality.³¹ Current human resource management thinking also makes employee involvement central to the new workplace environment, encouraging workers to take their own decisions and act autonomously in empowered teams.³²

Successive UK governments have highlighted enhanced employee involvement as a key factor in improving business competitiveness. As former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke put it:

"We need to do away with old-fashioned 'us and them' attitudes in industry. Successful companies in a modern economy need to involve their employees . . . share ownership, profit-related pay, employee share ownership plans, cooperatives - they can all help us to achieve the essential goals of competition and cooperation: competition in our economy and cooperation within our companies."³³

This promotion of employee involvement was even backed with a legal obligation on larger companies (250-plus staff) to include a statement in their annual report about the action the company had taken over the preceding 12 months to further it. A 1996 survey of 100 companies' annual reports found that of the 98 statements on non-financial involvement 10 could be judged "substantial" - twice as many as in a similar 1991 survey.³⁴

Glass manufacturer Pilkington's 1996 directors' report and accounts contained the following statement on employee involvement:

"The company has a long established and well recognised policy of encouraging employee involvement through communication and consultation on a wide range of issues. Wherever possible, employees are invited to participate in multi-discipline quality and process improvement teams."³⁵

Financial participation schemes imply a corresponding level of employee involvement. Share ownership schemes, for example, confer on individual members of staff a "legitimate right to participate in decision-making".³⁶ According to Poole and Jenkins, financial participation is part of a "managerial strategy to influence . . . the level of joint decision-making between management and employees".³⁷ Employee shareholders can participate directly in the organisation by, for example, voting for the board of directors at annual general meetings or by taking part in quality circles, and indirectly through the development of greater communication with management and by exercising independent judgment in day-to-day activities.³⁸

Certainly, the majority of organisations with financial participation schemes see them as a way of enhancing wider employee involvement. It was noted earlier that both the Proshare survey and the IR/ED/HMT study identified greater employee involvement as the main aim for companies in introducing profit-sharing and employee share ownership schemes. British Aerospace (BAe) is an example. The aim of its company-wide profit-sharing scheme is, according to the employee booklet outlining the arrangement, to "involve everyone even more directly in improving the performance of the company".³⁹

The Proshare and the IR/ED/HMT surveys both found that financial participation had led to improved employee involvement. The Proshare study reported that 68% of respondents said that their schemes had achieved the "desired impact", while the IR/ED/HMT survey found that in the proceeding three years 60% of companies with approved profit-sharing and SAYE share schemes had increased employee involvement, compared with only 22% of organisations not operating such schemes.⁴⁰

Some studies not surprisingly indicate that the greater the proportion of shares owned by staff the higher the level of involvement.⁴¹ For example, FI Group, in which employees and employee trusts hold a 46% equity stake, has a management style that allows people to "participate in decisions and helps to shape future strategy".⁴² One study of the level of employee participation and corporate governance in majority employee-owned firms, mainly UK bus companies, concluded that staff involvement in decision-making focused on "strategic rather than task-related decisions".⁴³ It found a significant difference between employee-owned and conventional firms when it came to investment decision taking and such areas as marketing and management selection.

Employee commitment

Employee commitment tends to signify a person's "affective attachment and identification" to, and with, a organisation.⁴⁴ And it is generally believed that it can be enhanced by profit sharing and share ownership. Poole and Jenkins suggest that because financial participation increases the employee's stake in the company, it can generate a greater desire on the part of staff to "direct their individual and collective behaviour towards the corporate goal of increased profits rather than to the traditional worker's goal of higher wages and improved conditions of work".⁴⁵

An employee's commitment to his or her employing organisation can usually be identified by three key qualities:

Research indicates, however, that employees tend to take an instrumental view of such matters and that commitment to an organisation will only be enhanced if the individual's expectations are realised.⁴⁷ An Australian study supports this assertion, claiming that improvements in employee commitment which result from financial participation schemes are positively related to profitability and will be abandoned if the company's performance declines.⁴⁸ A US commentator makes a similar point, estimating that more than 90% of employees in high-technology companies tend to exercise their share options and sell the shares on the same day.⁴⁹

Further evidence is provided by BT and VSEL. When BT was privatised in 1984, a proportion of company equity was distributed among employees. But, even though 96% of employees held shares, the majority of staff still took industrial action in January and February 1987, one picket declaring that share ownership "made no difference at all. It's just another kind of bonus".⁵⁰ Similarly, VSEL, the Cumbria-based shipbuilder, suffered strike action in 1988 even though its workforce acquired more than a quarter of the company's shares when it was privatised in 1986.⁵¹

Other studies present a slightly more positive picture of financial participation's impact on levels of employee commitment (see figure 2.4). For example, Poole and Jenkins found that, in terms of employees' perspective on their work and career, their research did "lend support to the view that employee attitudes are affected by financial participation and, in particular, that commitment to the company develops as a consequence".⁵² A 1992 survey reported that 47% of employees said that their commitment to the company had increased as a result of financial involvement.⁵³

A CBI survey of employers' views on financial participation reported that 59% of respondents said that it helped to retain key employees.⁵⁴ Similarly, a study of 52 UK engineering companies meanwhile found that firms with financial participation schemes "exhibited significantly lower quit rates" than those with no such arrangements⁵⁵.

The proportion of shares going to staff may affect how they perceive financial participation. A US survey of more than 3,500 employees in 45 companies conducted by the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) reported that "the more shares they [employees] owned, the more committed they were to the company, the more satisfied they were with their jobs, and the less likely they were to leave"⁵⁶.

Financial performance

A company's financial performance can be evaluated using a raft of measures, including productivity, profitability, share value and turnover. Most of the research into the impact of financial participation schemes on financial performance suggests that profit-sharing and share ownership schemes can boost performance (the findings are summarised in figure 2.6).

Figure 2.6: Impact of financial participation schemes on corporate performance: summary of 17 studies

Sources: National Centre for Employee Ownership (Oakland, California); Poole M and Jenkins G (1991), "The impact of profit-sharing and employee shareholding schemes", Journal of General Management, vol 16 (3), Spring, pp.52-72; Leadbetter C (1997), A piece of the action: employee ownership, equity pay and the rise of the knowledge economy (Demos, London).

The Capital Strategies' UK Employee Ownership Index^™, which tracks the relative share price performance of UK quoted companies where employees (other than directors) own at least 10% of the ordinary share capital, has outperformed the FTSE All-Share index in 12 of the 23 quarters since 1992, to stand 70% higher in cumulative terms.⁵⁷ The company's US sister organisation reports similar findings for America.⁵⁸ Companies, too, report substantial improvements in performance following the implementation of financial participation schemes. For example, FI Group has reported profit increases of 40% or more in each year between 1993 and 1997, while United Airlines has recorded the following improvements:

Among our case study organisations, Tim Watts, chair of Pertemps Recruitment Partnership, has no doubt that employee financial participation has been a key influence on its financial performance over the past four years (see case study 3, Case studies).

However, some caution is necessary. There are problems in distinguishing a causal relationship between financial performance and financial participation. Profitability, for example, is affected by a host of external and internal forces over which employees have no control, and productivity gains are often the result of technological advances, new machinery or changes in processes. Hanson and Watson say of their survey of UK companies:

"The observed improvement in performance may be a reflection of generally good corporate management and industrial relations practices. That is, profit sharing may be merely one element of an integrated business strategy which leads to improved performance, rather than profit sharing possessing any causal influence of its own."⁶⁰

Some commentators have even spoken of potential dangers posed by financial participation. The pitfalls of concentrated employee ownership include maximisation of employee self-interest, a depletion of managerial energies and managerial influence, and corporate apathy.⁶¹ For these reasons, and to prevent share value dilution and protect existing shareholders, the investment protection committee of the Association of British Insurers recommends that "no more than 10% of the issued ordinary share capital from time to time should be set aside for all the company's schemes in any rolling 10-year period". It also suggests that the "prior approval of shareholders should be sought for any ESOP arrangement where the ESOP/ESOT may hold more than 5% of the company's ordinary share capital".⁶²

BEST PRACTICE

Participatory management

The summaries of studies examining the impact of financial participation on corporate performance in figure 2.6 (on p.12) highlight that where the schemes are run in conjunction with participatory management systems the positive effect is much more pronounced. For example, Quarrey and Rosen suggest that companies applying participatory techniques, such as self-directed teamworking, quality circles and employee task forces, experience performance improvements of between 8% and 11% after the introduction of employee ownership schemes.⁶³ The US National Centre for Employee Ownership (NCEO) comments that:

"Studies on participative management alone find a small positive impact on performance, but not nearly enough to explain the synergy between ownership and participation these other studies have found."⁶⁴

CMG, the computer management company, is an example of an enterprise that is benefiting from a participatory management style running alongside substantial employee share ownership. The company engages all staff in the decision-making process through "regular staff, management and policy-forming meetings".⁶⁵

And it has been highly successful: its share price rose by 68% in the first quarter of 1998, and one report suggested that this was in part due to the "degree of employee involvement, accountability and ownership".⁶⁶

Equitable schemes

Kelly and Kelly suggest that where financial participation fails to generate attitudinal change among employees this may be because of the "perceived inequality in distribution, with a majority [of studies] reporting managers to be the main beneficiaries of such schemes".⁶⁷ However, more and more companies now operate all-employee share option schemes. Asda's Colleague Share Ownership Plan (see above) and automotive components manufacturer Unipart's share option scheme are notable examples, as is PepsiCo's SharePower scheme, which, when it was introduced in June 1989, was the first broad-based stock option programme to be offered by a large business to all its staff.⁶⁸

At Tullis Russell, the Share Council, which provides employees with a voice in the running of the group's share schemes and represents their interests as shareholders to the board, successfully overturned the existing salary-based share allocation system and replaced it with equal distribution for all.⁶⁹

Communication

Communication is widely accepted to be a key element of successful financial participation. Steve Kelly, remuneration manager at NPI, believes that ongoing communication is crucial to ensure staff acceptance and support for financial participation (see case study 1, Case studies). Initially, staff will need to understand the intricacies of the various schemes and the potential benefits of financial involvement. Later, participants in profit-sharing and share ownership schemes, for example, will want to be kept informed of company performance and the impact of fluctuations on their stake in the business. PepsiCo realised that the success of its stock option programme would depend on an "effective communications process that would educate as well as motivate employees".⁷⁰ Likewise, Sainsbury's considers that "communications is an essential ingredient" of its profit-sharing and share ownership schemes and "each year the company carries out a major communications exercise with employees about the business performance of the company".⁷¹

A novel approach to the communication of financial information is provided by NPI, which has installed software on the computers of all its staff enabling them to click on a so-called "reward icon" and receive updated details of company performance and their own level of reward based on the figures (see case study 1, Case studies). Pertemps Recruitment Partnership also acknowledges the importance of communication and every year each member of staff receives a copy of the annual accounts, which contains an alphabetical list of everyone's remuneration. And Pertemps highlights an important aspect of the dissemination of financial data: the process generates a desire for ever more information (see case study 3, Case studies).

1     Inland Revenue Statistics.

²     Proshare (1998), Employee share ownership research (London).

³     IRS (1998), "We're in this together: profit-sharing schemes", Pay and Benefits Bulletin 444, March, pp.2-8.

⁴     National Centre for Employee Ownership (1997), ESOPs, stock options and 401(k) plans now control 8.3% of corporate equity (NCEO, California).

⁵     National Centre for Employee Ownership (1997), The Employee Ownership 100 (NCEO, California); "Employee-owners help bolster the bottom line", HR Magazine, February 1997.

⁶     "The 100 best companies to work for in America", Fortune, 12 January 1998.

⁷     Jones D C and Kato T (1993), "Employee stock ownership plans and productivity in Japanese manufacturing firms", British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol 31 (3), September, pp.331-346.

⁸     Kjellberg A (1992), "Sweden: can the model survive?", in Ferner A and Hyman R (eds), Industrial relations in the new Europe (Blackwell, Oxford), pp.88-142.

⁹     IRS (1997), "Company profit-sharing results for 1995", European Industrial Relations Review 278, March, pp.21-22.

¹⁰    The Guardian, 24 January 1998.

¹¹    Vodafone press release, 19 March 1998.

¹²    Levi Strauss press release, 13 June 1996.

¹³    Sloan R and Jackson N (1996), Sharing in success? Employee and executive financial participation in FTSE 100 companies (Bacon & Woodrow, London).

¹⁴    "Partnership brings material gains at John Lewis", IPA magazine, December 1996.

¹⁵    "ESOPs fable becomes a reality", Management Today, November 1997, pp.112-114.

¹⁶    "Vodafone shares its options with IT staff", Personnel Today, 9 April 1998.

¹⁷    British Aerospace Annual Report 1997, p.18.

¹⁸    CMG job advertisement, Evening Standard, 29 July 1998.

¹⁹    William M Mercer (1998).

²⁰    Employee Share Ownership Centre (1998), ESOPs made simple (ESOP Centre, London).

²¹    IRS (1995), "Employee ownership: we're the bosses now", IRS Employment Review 587, July, pp.4-9.

²²    Proshare, see note 2, above.

²³    Smith G (1993), "Employee share schemes in Britain", Employment Gazette, April, pp.149-154.

²⁴    See, for example, Arthur Andersen (1997), Executive remuneration and equity incentives on flotation (London); Monks Partnership (1997), Long term rewards: choosing the right plan (Saffron Walden).

²⁵    IRS (1997), "Finance deals static at 4%", Pay and Benefits Bulletin 424, May, pp.7-11; IRS (1998), "Finance deals dip to 4%", Pay and Benefits Bulletin 449, June, pp.7-12.

²⁶    Asda news release, 15 July 1998.

²⁷    "Share in your firm's success", Sunday Times, 10 May 1998.

²⁸    IRS (1998), "John Lewis Partnership: 22% partnership bonus announced", Pay and Benefits Bulletin 446, April, p.13.

²⁹    Ramsay H, Leopold J and Hyman J (1986), "Profit-sharing and employee share ownership: an initial assessment", Employee Relations, vol 8 (1).

³⁰    Leadbetter C (1997), A piece of the action: employee ownership, equity pay and the rise of the knowledge economy (Demos, London), p.19.

³¹    IRS (1996), Quality through continuous improvement, IRS Management Review 1, April.

³²    Marchington M (1995), "Involvement and participation", in Storey J (ed), Human resource management: a critical text (Routledge, London), pp.280-305.

³³    Kenneth Clarke, speech to Industrial Society Conference, Employment Gazette, May 1987.

³⁴    IRS (1996), "What about the workers? Employment policy statements in 100 top annual reports", IRS Employment Review 619, November, pp.6-11.

³⁵    Pilkington UK, Directors' report and accounts 1996.

³⁶    Long R J (1979), "Desires for and patterns of worker participation in decision-making after conversion to employee ownership", Academy of Management Journal, vol 22 (3), pp.611-617.

³⁷    Poole M and Jenkins G (1990), The impact of economic democracy: profit-sharing and employee-shareholding schemes (Routledge, London), pp.15-16.

³⁸    Mitchell D (1987), "The share economy and industrial relations", Industrial Relations, vol 26 (1), pp.1-17.

³⁹    The new British Aerospace profit-sharing scheme: an equal share in our success (BAe, 1997), p.1.

⁴⁰    Proshare, see note 2, above, p.21; Smith, see note 23, above, p.152.

⁴¹    Long R J (1980), "Job attitudes and organisational performance under employee ownership", Academy of Management Journal, vol 23 (4), pp.726-737.

⁴²    Capital Strategies (1998), Case study: FI Group plc (London).

⁴³    Pendleton A, McDonald J, Robinson A and Wilson N (1996), "Employee participation and corporate governance in employee-owned firms", Work, Employment & Society, vol 10 (2), pp.205-226.

⁴⁴    Coopey J and Hartley J (1991), "Reconsidering the case for organisational commitment", Human Resource Management Journal, vol 1 (3), pp.18-32.

⁴⁵    Poole and Jenkins, see note 37, above, pp.15-16.

⁴⁶    Makin P, Cooper C and Cox C (1996), Organisations and the psychological contract (British Psychological Society, Leicester), p.80.

⁴⁷    Rosen C, Klein K J and Young K M (1985), Employee ownership in America: the equity solution (Heath, Lexington).

⁴⁸    Goldstein S (1978), "Employee share ownership and motivation", Journal of Industrial Relations, September, pp.311-330.

⁴⁹    National Centre for Employee Ownership (1998), Incentive compensation for employee ownership companies (NCEO, Oakland).

⁵⁰    Financial Times, 27 January 1987.

⁵¹    Financial Times, 5 May 1989.

⁵²    Poole and Jenkins, see note 37, above, p.64.

⁵³    Marchington M et al (1992), New developments in employee involvement, ED Research Series 2 (HMSO).

⁵⁴    CBI (1995), "Financial participation - CBI survey findings", Employment Affairs Report 64, June, pp.19-21.

⁵⁵    Wilson N, Cable J R and Peel M J (1990), "Quit rates and the impact of participation, profit-sharing and unionisation: empirical evidence from UK engineering firms", British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol 28 (2), July, pp. 197-213.

⁵⁶    National Centre for Employee Ownership (1998), An overview of ESOPs, stock options and employee ownership (NCEO, Oakland).

⁵⁷    "One year old and the UK Employee Ownership Index still powers ahead of the FTSE All-Share", Capital Strategies news release, 24 April 1998.

⁵⁸    Financial Times, 29 April 1998.

⁵⁹    "ESOPs fable becomes a reality", Management Today, November 1997; IRS (1998), "Employee-ownership is only part of the industrial relations strategy at United Airlines", IRS Employment Review, forthcoming.

⁶⁰    Hanson C and Watson R (1990), "Profit-sharing and company performance: some empirical evidence of the UK", in Jenkins G and Poole M (eds), New forms of ownership (Routledge, London).

⁶¹    Maaløe E (1993), "How to become a successful worker-owner: a study of long-term individual change after employee buyouts", Economic and Industrial Democracy, vol 14, pp.133-148.

⁶²    Association of British Insurers (1995), Share option and profit sharing (ABI guidance notes).

⁶³    Quarrey M and Rosen C (1987), Employee ownership and corporate performance, Harvard Business Review, September-October.

⁶⁴    National Centre for Employee Ownership (1998), A statistical profile of employee ownership (NCEO, Oakland, California).

⁶⁵    People and companies; employee involvement in Britain (1989, Department of Employment, HMSO), pp.48-49.

⁶⁶    Price Waterhouse Corporate Register, March 1998.

⁶⁷    Kelly J and Kelly C (1991), "'Them and us': social psychology and 'the new industrial relations'", British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol 29 (1), p.39.

⁶⁸    "PepsiCo shares power and wealth with workers", Personnel Journal, June 1995, pp.42-49.

⁶⁹    IRS (1995), "A share in the firm", IRS Employment Review 589, August, pp.12-16.

⁷⁰    "PepsiCo shares power and wealth with workers", Personnel Journal, June 1995, pp.42-49.

⁷¹    People and companies; employee involvement in Britain (1989, Department of Employment, HMSO), p.35.