Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/330257 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
U.S.E. Working Paper Series No. 25-02
Publisher: 
Utrecht University, Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.), Utrecht
Abstract: 
This paper presents an analytical economic democracy-shared capitalism framework to better understanding of the nature and firm-level drivers of employee ownership, in particular the purpose of the firm. This framework allows us to answer the question: to what extent and how does firm purpose affect the nature of employee ownership? We empirically assess the extent to which firm purpose is related to distinct employee ownership types, with data from a survey of a representative sample of 620 firms with more than ten employees in The Netherlands. Our findings show that worker cooperatives are strongly associated with firms pursuing a social purpose, while employee share ownership and profit and gain sharing are not. In fact, shared capitalism forms of employee ownership do not significantly differ in firm purpose from firms without employee ownership.
Subjects: 
Employee ownership
employee share ownership
worker cooperatives
shared capitalism
economic democracy
firm purpose
JEL: 
J54
J330
L210
M520
P13
P12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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