The Perception and Effects of Share Ownership: Empirical Evidence from Employee Buy‐Outs

Abstract

Forward Links to Citing Articles Apology British Journal of Industrial Relations 43:4, 751 This paper explores the impact of employee ownership on employee attitudes, using attitudinal data obtained from four UK bus companies which had adopted the ESOP form of employee share ownership. After reviewing the recent UK literature, the paper highlights the findings from US literature that a ‘sense of ownership’ is an important intervening variable between actual ownership and attitudinal change, and that opportunities for participating in decision‐making are more important than ownership per se in generating feelings of ownership. The paper incorporates these possibilities in using a two‐stage ordered probit model to explore the relationships between ownership and attitudinal outcomes. The findings support intrinsic and instrumental models of ownership, and indicate that feelings of ownership are significantly associated with higher levels of commitment and satisfaction.