LEVERAGING THE JOB OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE BY WORKER CO-OPERATIVES
Abstract
This study examined the causal link between the job ownership structure and increased commitment and motivation in worker co-operatives. The separation of job ownership from management and the effective alignment of the interests of job managers and the owners have generated a lot of discussion in the past. Proponents of the agency theory have, on the one hand, recommend actions that maximize shareholders value. On the other hand, the adoption of sweeping statements of purpose by many business organizations, have led to the recommendation of the stakeholder and the stewardship theories as being the appropriate guides to corporate actions. However, given the complexities of modern business organizations where the expectations of the workers and job owners are increasingly getting blurred, reliance on these theories does not provide a satisfactory solution. Survey questionnaires were the main instrument for primary data collection in this study. Semi-structured follow-up interviews were also conducted to supplement the method. The research design included three phases of data collection and analysis. Phase one was a qualitative method of informal, semi-structured interviews while phase two was a quantitative survey, the findings of which were used to construct further semi-structured follow-up interviews with worker co-operative stakeholders. The study concluded that the job ownership structure adopted by worker co-operatives has resulted into increased commitment and motivation which has in turn lead to increased productivity and improved performance.
Article visualizations:
Keywords
References
Berg, N. (2002). Non-response bias. School of Social Sciences. University of Texas, Dallas. Available on line: http://www.utdallas.edu/~nberg/Berg_ARTICLES/BergNon-ResponseBiasMay2002.pdf
Bibby, A. (2004). Financial participation by employees in co-operatives in Britain. Journal of co-operative studies 37 (111), 5-6.
Bradley, K. & Gelb, A. (1983). Worker + capitalism = the new industrial relations. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.
Bryman, A. & Cramer, D. (2005). Quantitative data analysis with SPSS 12 and 13. New York: Routledge.
Carter, N. (2006). Political Participation and the Workplace: the Spillover
Thesis Revisited. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 8: 410-26.
Cohen, D. & Prusak, L. (2001). In good company: How social capital makes organizations work. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Cockerton, P., Gilmour-White, T. Pearce, J & Whyatt, A. (1980). Workers co-operatives: A Handbook. Aberdeen: Aberdeen People’s Press Ltd.
De-Miguel, A. Pindado, J. & De-La-Torre, C. (2004). Ownership structure and firm value: new evidence from Spain. Strategic Management Journal 25
Donaldson & Davis (1991). Stewardship Theory or Agency Theory: CEO Governance and Shareholder Returns. Australian Journal of Management, 16, 1, June 1991
Fairbairn, B. (2003). Three strategic concepts for the guidance of co-operatives: Linkage, transparency and cognition. Saskatoon, SK: Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Saskatchewan.
Freeman, R. E. (1994). The politics of stakeholder theory. Business Ethics Quart. 4(4).
Field, A. (2005). Discovering statistics using SPSS. London: SAGE publications Ltd.
Fukuyama, F. (1999). Social capital and civil society. Fairfax, VA: Institute of Public Policy, George Mason University.
Hansen, G. B., Coontz, E. K. & Malan, A. (1997) Steps to Starting a worker co-op. The Center for Co- operatives, University of California, Davis.
Kinnear, P. R. & Gray, C. D. (2004). SPSS 12 made simple. Hove: Psychology Press.
Michie, J., Oughton, C., & Bennion, Y. (2002). Employee ownership, motivation and productivity. London: The Work Foundation.
Moser, C. A. & Kalton, G. (1989). Survey methods in social investigation. Gower: Aldershort.
Oakeshott, R. (1978). The case for workers’ co-operatives. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Postlethwaite, R., Michie, J., Burns, P., & Nuttall, G. (2005). Shared Company: How employee ownership works. London: Job Ownership Limited
Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sarantakos, S. (2003). Social Research. South Yarra: Macmillan Publishers Australia Pty Ltd.
Spear, R. (2002) ‘The Co-operative Advantage’, Annals of Public and Co-operative Economics, Oxford: Blackwells.
Stiglitz, J. (2002). Participation and development: perspectives from the comprehensive development paradigm. Review of Development Economics 6(2), 163-182.
United Nations (1996) Report of the Secretary General to the General Assembly on Status and role of co-operatives in the light of new economic and social trends, A/51/267.
Valentinov, V. (2004).Towards a social capital theory of co-operative organization. Journal of co-operative studies 37.3, 5 -18.
Wanjiru, N., 2004. Employee Ownership and efficiency: An evolutionary perspective. Industrial Law Journal, 33(3), 211-241.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejefr.v0i0.193
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2018 Joshua Wanjare
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.
Copyright © 2016 - 2023. European Journal of Economic and Financial Research (ISSN 2501-9430) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.
