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Broad-Based Stock Options: Before and After the Market Downturn
The International Journal of Human Resource Management
Abstract
We examine labor productivity in small, medium, and large firms that broadly distribute stock options under starkly different market conditions - during the bull (1995-1997) and bear (2000-2002) stock markets. We find greater labor output in both upward and downward markets in all firm size categories, with the exception of small firms in a declining market, where the productivity is also greater, but the statistical significance of the result is weak.
... It is seen as encouraging employees to identify more closely with their employing organisations, taking on board their values more fully, and thereby making a stronger contribution to their continued development (Blasi et al., 2016;Kurtulus and Kruse, 2017;Blasi et al., 2003;Gamble et al., 2002;Pendleton, 2006;Kaarsemaker et al., 2009;Robinson and Wilson, 2006;Kruse, 2016). It is believed that these processes will lead to enhanced organisational performance (Bryson and Freeman, 2010;Kruse et al., 2012;Poutsma and Braam, 2012;Robinson and Wilson, 2006;Sesil and Kroumova, 2007). As a result, ESO schemes have been promoted by policy makers and consultants in many countries. ...
... The potential for a free-rider effect may limit performance effects whilst transferring risk may impose some costs on employers (risk premiums). Most of the evidence from studies directly evaluating the links between ESO and performance finds positive effects of ESO (Bryson and Freeman, 2010;Kaarsemaker et al., 2009;Kruse et al., 2012;Kalmi et al., 2006;Poutsma and Braam, 2012;Robinson and Wilson, 2006;Sesil and Lin, 2011;Sesil and Kroumova, 2007;Blasi et al., 2016). A recent meta-analysis of 102 studies, representing over 56,000 firms, found that employee ownership has a small but positive and statistically significant relation to firm performance (O'Boyle et al., 2016). ...
Purpose
A range of studies have shown that performance is typically higher in organisations with employee share ownership (ESO) schemes in place. Many possible causal mechanisms explaining this relationship have been suggested. These include a reduction in labour turnover, synergies with other forms of productivity-enhancing communication and participation schemes, and synergies with employer-provided training. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper empirically assesses these potential linkages using data from the 2004 and 2011 British Workplace Employment Relations Surveys, and provides comparisons with earlier analyses conducted on the 1990 and 1998 versions of the survey.
Findings
Substantial differences are found between the 2004 and 2011 results: a positive relationship between ESO and workplace productivity and financial performance, observed in 2004, is no longer present in 2011. In both years, ESO is found to have no clear relationship with labour turnover, and there is no significant association between turnover and performance. There is, however, a positive moderating relationship with downward communication schemes in 2004 and in 2011 in the case of labour productivity. There is no corresponding relationship for upward involvement schemes.
Research limitations/implications
The results are only partially supportive of extant theory and its various predictions, and the relationship between ESO and performance seems to have weakened over time.
Originality/value
The study further questions the rhetoric offered in support of wider ESO.
Research linking broad‐based employee stock ownership (BESO) with firm performance continues to receive considerable attention both in and outside the field of management. Despite the evidence being generally positive regarding the BESO–firm performance relationship, there has been a relative dearth of research providing insights into the circumstances surrounding the effectiveness of BESO. With this research gap in mind, we formulated and launched this special issue. This guest editor introduction begins with a look at the research on this topic, followed by a brief discussion of each article accepted for publication. We conclude by highlighting the major themes from the collective contributions of the articles and share insights regarding future research in this growing research domain.
The three‐way interaction effect of (broad‐based) employee share ownership (ESO), training, and early promotion policy on labor productivity was examined in a longitudinal sample of 614 organizations (1,605 organization‐year data points) in Korea. The ESO–productivity relationship was positive only when the investment in training was high and the opportunity for early promotion was present. However, we found no evidence for the two‐way interaction effects of ESO and training and ESO and early promotion policy on labor productivity. The results are in alignment with the emergent view that the productivity benefits of ESO can be better realized when ESO coexists with a bundle of complementary human resource management (HRM) practices. Thus, this study meaningfully extends the contingency perspective and related studies in the ESO literature, which tend to examine the productivity effect of ESO in isolation or in conjunction with a single HRM practice.
This study investigates the relationship between broad-based financial participation plans (which target all employees) and financial performance, using a panel dataset of listed, companies (excluding financial institutions) during the period 1992–2009, comprising 2,153 observations. We make a distinction between broad-based profit sharing, share and stock option plans. The panel data allow us to take into account time-lag effects, as profit sharing is usually said to have short-term effects, while share plans and stock options and are intended to have longer term impact. Our results show that broad-based profit sharing and share plans and combinations of these plans are positively related with financial performance when compared with companies without such plans. However, the results are inconsistent for the associations between broad-based stock option plans and financial performance in the longer term. These findings extend the literature on financial participation plans by including different forms of broad-based financial participation and showing that the different forms affect companies’ financial performance differently. Our results also support earlier reports in the literature, which suggest that there are important synergies between broad-based profit-sharing and share plans, in terms of a better combination of intrinsic ownership behaviors and extrinsic motivation of employees as well as a stronger focus on collective interest and performance when compared with single plans.
We develop theory specifying the role of ownership in the employment relationship and address how sharing in ownership's privileges can create convergent psychological contracts between workers and employers. We specify two factors limiting the attractiveness of ownership for some workers - that is, the potential for internal conflict among worker/owners transitioning to this dual role and the risks that ownership entails - and also outline a research agenda to investigate how allocating ownership to workers impacts their interests and those of managers and investors.
When markets grew rapidly in the 1990s, many companies unquestioningly adopted employee stock options and implemented them at all levels within organizations. Recently, however, the corporate world has been described as suffering from an "overdose" of stock option compensation. We argue that more attention should be paid to the design of stock options to enhance their effectiveness. In support of this argument, we first review the upsides and downsides of stock options from recipient, company, and shareholder perspectives. Next, we identify conditions in which stock options can help a company implement a strategy and motivate key talent. We then provide guidelines for designing stock options, suggesting that managers must ask the following questions: Who should receive stock options? How many? What terms should be used? How often? At what price? What ownership? Careful consideration of these questions will lead to employee stock option compensation that promotes strategic goals; enables companies to recruit, motivate. and retain employee talent; and satisfies organizational stakeholders. Finally, we highlight some emerging trends that managers must take into account in future stock option designs.
Agency theory dominates research on equity holdings-firm performance relationships; however, extant studies provide no consensus about the direction and magnitude of such relationships. Consistent linkages have not been demonstrated for firm performance and CEO, officer, director, institutional, or blockholder equity. We conducted a series of meta-analyses of relevant empirical ownership-performance studies. The meta-analyses provide few examples of systematic relationships, lending little support for agency theory. We propose a substitution theory perspective for future ownership-performance research.
In a laboratory study, 192 undergraduate students performed a task for which they received either high, medium, or low monetary outcomes as a result of a fair or unfair procedure. Subjects reported that medium and high outcomes were fair regardless of the procedure used, but that low outcomes were only fair when they were based on a fair procedure. The outcomes received, however, had no impact on ratings of the fairness of the procedures used. These results corroborated earlier findings from the dispute-resolution literature, but extend them to reward-distribution contexts in which different manipulations of procedural justice were used. The limitations of equity theory in accounting for improprieties in organizational procedures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A new conceptual framework to define and differentiate among diverse forms of employee ownership is developed. Two central rights associated with ownership, return and control rights, are identified. Their impact on individual motivation, individual performance, organizational structural variables and organizational performance is evaluated. We show how, over certain ranges of combinations of control and return rights, the relationship between alternative ownership arrangements and organizational performance may be nonlinear. The implications for the introduction of employee ownership and the evaluation of empirical work are considered.
The present study has two general purposes. First, based on the compensation strategy literature, we examine the extent to which organizations facing similar conditions make different managerial compensation decisions regarding base pay, bonus pay, and eligibility for long-term incentives. Second, working from expectancy and agency theory perspectives, we explore the consequences of these decisions for subsequent firm performance as measured by return on assets. Using longitudinal data on approximately 16,000 top and middle level managers and 200 organizations, significant between-organization differences in compensation decisions are found. The smallest organization effects are on the level of base pay. The largest organization effects are on bonus levels and eligibility for long-term incentives. In other words, our results suggest that organizations tend to distinguish themselves through decisions about pay contingency or variability rather than through decisions about the level of base pay. To study consequences, residualized measures (adjusted for employee and job factors) of organization pay level and pay mix are used. Pay level is not associated with organization financial performance. On the other hand, greater contingency of pay in the form of bonuses and long-term incentives is associated with better financial performance.
[Excerpt] As organizations continue to face mounting competitive pressures, they seek to do more with less and do it with better quality. As goals for sales volume, profits, innovation, and quality are raised, employment growth is often tightly controlled and in many cases, substantial cuts in employment have been made. To accomplish more with fewer employees calls for effective management of human resources. Typically, the employee compensation system, the focus of this chapter, plays a major role in efforts to manage human resources better.
Recent years have witnessed burgeoning interest in the degree to which human resource systems contribute to organizational effectiveness. We argue that extant research has not fully considered important contextual conditions which moderate the efficacy of these practices. Specifically, we invoke a contingency perspective in proposing that industry characteristics affect the relative importance and value of high performance work practices (HPWPs). We test this proposition on a sample of non-diversified manufacturing firms. After controlling for the influence of a number of other factors, study findings support the argument that industry characteristics moderate the influence of HPWPs on firm productivity. Specifically, the impact of a system of HPWPs on firm productivity is significantly influenced by the industry conditions of capital intensity, growth and differentiation.
Despite the widespread use of incentive pay, there is limited evidence about what factors influence its organization-wide, broad-based application. This study uses data from three sources and multiple levels, including a unique data set of the total compensation of individual employees in 104 firms over a four-year period (1997-2000), and theoretically and empirically examines the use of bonuses and stock options in organization-wide applications. We examine the efficacy of three main rational theories, principal-agency, positivist agency and contingency theories, which are based on the premise that incentives are related to performance. At the individual level we identify two determinants: type of job and level within the hierarchy and four determinants at the organizational level: performance, risk, size, and strategy. Our results indicate that the factors derived from the three theories provide a limited explanation for the variation in the use of broad-based incentives within and across organizations.
Increased equity participation by employees has attracted substantial interest for its potential to affect both economic outcomes (e.g., worker and firm performance) and social outcomes (e.g., wealth and income inequality). This paper summarizes the findings from over 50 large-sample empirical studies that have been done on employee ownership and broad-based stock option plans in the past 25 years, covering studies on plan adoption, employee attitudes and behaviours, firm performance, and employee wages and wealth. The results from these studies indicate employee ownership is linked to better outcomes on average but employee ownership clearly does not automatically improve worker and firm outcomes given that there are both positive and neutral findings. Additional research is needed to determine the conditions under which employee ownership improves economic outcomes, to examine worker and employer concerns and the trade-offs they are willing to make, and to explore the further potential of these systems.
Increasingly, firms are considering the adoption of new work practices, such as problem-solving teams, enhanced communication with workers, employment security, flexibility in job assignments, training workers for multiple jobs, and greater reliance on incentive pay. This paper provides empirical evidence to address the question: do these human resource management practices improve worker productivity? For this study, we constructed our own data base through personal site visits to 26 steel plants which contained one specific steelmaking process, and collected longitudinal data with precise measures on productivity, work practices, and the technology in these production lines. The empirical results consistently support the following conclusion: the adoption of a coherent system of these new work practices, including work teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, training in multiple jobs, and extensive reliance on incentive pay, produces substantially higher levels of productivity than do more 'traditional' approaches involving narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision. In contrast, adopting individual work practice innovations in isolation has no effect on productivity. We interpret this evidence as support for recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among a firm's work practices.
Using a unique international data set from a 1989-90 survey of 62 automotive assembly plants, the author tests two hypotheses: that innovative HR practices affect performance not individually but as interrelated elements in an internally consistent HR "bundle" or system; and that these HR bundles contribute most to assembly plant productivity and quality when they are integrated with manufacturing policies under the "organizational logic" of a flexible production system. Analysis of the survey data, which tests three indices representing distinct bundles of human resource and manufacturing practices, supports both hypotheses. Flexible production plants with team-based work systems, "high-commitment" HR practices (such as contingent compensation and extensive training), and low inventory and repair buffers consistently outperformed mass production plants. Variables capturing two-way and three-way interactions among the bundles of practices are even better predictors of performance, supporting the integration hypothesis. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization – to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization. It is common to see the firm characterized by the power to settle issues by fiat, by authority, or by disciplinary action superior to that available in the conventional market. This is delusion. The firm does not own all its inputs. It has no power of fiat, no authority, no disciplinary action any different in the slightest degree from ordinary market contracting between any two people. I can “punish” you only by withholding future business or by seeking redress in the courts for any failure to honor our exchange agreement. That is exactly all that any employer can do. He can fire or sue, just as I can fire my grocer by stopping purchases from him or sue him for delivering faulty products.
The paper examines the determinants and performance consequences of equity grants to senior-level executives, lower-level managers, and non-exempt employees of "new economy" firms. We find that many of the equity grant determinants and their relative importance vary significantly between new and old economy firms. In addition, we find that employee retention objectives, which new economy firms rank as the most important goal of their equity grant programs, have a significant impact on new hire grants, but not on annual, ongoing grants. Our exploratory performance tests indicate that lower than expected option grants and/or existing option holdings are associated with lower accounting and stock price performance in subsequent years. However, we find that greater than expected option and equity grants and holdings have little consistent association with future performance.
This paper analyzes the survival of organizations in which decision agents do not bear a major share of the wealth effects of their decisions. This is what the literature on large corporations calls separation of 'ownership' and 'control.' Such separation of decision and risk bearing functions is also common to organizations like large professional partnerships, financial mutuals and nonprofits. We contend that separation of decision and risk bearing functions survives in these organizations in part because of the benefits of specialization of management and risk bearing but also because of an effective common approach to controlling the implied agency problems. In particular, the contract structures of all these organizations separate the ratification and monitoring of decisions from the initiation and implementation of the decisions.
In this paper we draw on recent progress in the theory of (1) property rights, (2) agency, and (3) finance to develop a theory of ownership structure for the firm.1 In addition to tying together elements of the theory of each of these three areas, our analysis casts new light on and has implications for a variety of issues in the professional and popular literature, such as the definition of the firm, the “separation of ownership and control,” the “social responsibility” of business, the definition of a “corporate objective function,” the determination of an optimal capital structure, the specification of the content of credit agreements, the theory of organizations, and the supply side of the completeness-of-markets problem.
In this study, we extended agency-based research by examining the role of risk in the structure of managerial compensation and its relationship to organization performance. Our results suggest that organizations facing higher risk do not place greater emphasis on short-term incentives than other organizations - rather, they place less emphasis on them. Also, higher-risk firms that relied on incentive pay exhibited poorer performance than higher-risk firms that did not emphasize incentive pay.
Study results indicate a positive association between use of high-involvement work practices and employee retention and firm productivity. A disordinal interaction was indicated: employee turnover was associated with decreased productivity when use of high-involvement work practices was high and with increased productivity when use of these practices was low.
Building upon the observation that individuals feel ownership toward a variety of targets, we suggest that under certain conditions, organizational members can develop feelings of ownership toward the organization and various organizational factors. We define psychological ownership, identify its "roots" and the primary "routes" through which it develops, and propose certain organizational outcomes. We discuss the conceptual distinctiveness of psychological ownership from a set of related constructs and suggest some theoretical and managerial implications of our theory.
A model is developed that explicates one process through which employee ownership operates, leading to a set of social-psychological and behavioral effects. Where the formal ownership system is operationalized such that it leads to psychological ownership, a bonding or integration of the employee-owner with the organization occurs. It is through these processes that employee ownership exercises an influence upon group and individual outcomes. A set of antecedent and moderating variables to the operation of the formal ownership system is identified.
We examine determinants of non-executive employee stock option holdings, grants, and exercises for 756 firms during 1994-1997. We find that firms use greater stock option compensation when facing capital requirements and financing constraints. Our results are also consistent with firms using options to attract and retain certain types of employees as well as to create incentives to increase firm value. After controlling for economic determinants and stock returns, option exercises are greater (less) when the firm's stock price hits 52-week highs (lows), which confirms in a broad sample the psychological bias documented by Heath et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999) 601-628).
A tremendous amount of research has explored the relationship, between managerial pay and firm performance. We argue that this research has generally been limited because it ignores other criteria that can be used to determine managerial pay, as well as the influence of a firm's governance structure and various contingencies. Our analysis leads to a general framework for research on executive pay. This framework is used to evaluate the present state of research in this field and the contribution of the six papers in this special research forum, and to identify directions for further research.
Aligning employees with the organization’s strategic goals has become increasingly important as organizations struggle to gain or sustain a competitive advantage. This article defines “line of sight” as employee understanding of organizational objectives and how to contribute to those objectives. There has been much discussion among academics and practitioners, yet we have limited knowledge about what line of sight is, how to measure it, how it can be enhanced, and what it makes happen. Human resource professionals from leading organizations completed surveys and participated in focus groups to begin to explore these critical issues. Fruitful directions for future research and innovative practice are discussed.
Key issues in the strategic design of organizational reward systems are reviewed. Possible objectives for reward systems, including motivation, attraction/retention, culture development, and skill development are considered. The relationship between these objectives and such design options as performance pay, skill-based pay, flexible benefits market position, and internal versus external pay comparison orientation are reviewed. The process issues of openness and participation in pay system administration and development are also related to the possible objectives of the pay system. It is concluded that pay system design can be an important issue in determining the effectiveness of an organizational in relation to its external environment. (Author)
Agency theory is an important, yet controversial, theory. This paper reviews agency theory, its contributions to organization theory, and the extant empirical work and develops testable propositions. The conclusions are that agency theory (a) offers unique insight into in- formation systems, outcome uncertainty, incentives, and risk and (b) is an empirically valid perspective, particularly when coupled with complementary perspectives. The principal recommendation is to in- corporate an agency perspective in studies of the many problems having a cooperative structure. One day Deng Xiaoping decided to take his grandson to visit Mao. "Call me granduncle," Mao offered warmly. "Oh, I certainly couldn't do that, Chairman Mao," the awe-struck child replied. "Why don't you give him an apple?" suggested Deng. No sooner had Mao done so than the boy happily chirped, "Oh thank you, Granduncle." "You see," said Deng, "what in- centives can achieve." ("Capitalism," 1984, p. 62)
Higher-powered incentives have spread to a broader subset of employees within hierarchies, largely through group-based pay plans such as profit sharing, gainsharing, and team-based rewards. Yet, in most organizations, the incentive intensity of group rewards, like the incentive intensity of individual rewards, remains low. This paper explores the determinants of incentive intensity in group-based rewards. We draw upon agency theory for hypotheses and test these with a sample of 663 group-based pay plans. We find that incentive intensity is higher when groups are small, when plans need not measure quality, and when management participation is high. We also find that plans embedded in small firms and plans with longevity have higher incentive intensity.
Inconsistent findings have been reported in the few studies investigating the relationship between the perceived value of pay and incentive performance. One hundred and seventy-eight female incentive employees with a nine-week, non-judgmental performance measure responded to a developed valence of pay scale. This measure used items assessing the perceived ability of pay to address employee needs. Three factor-scales were found within these items. Support for the hypothesized positive relationship between pay valence and incentive performance was found, dependent on which of the three scales was used. These findings provide initial insight into the means by which pay, with its ability to address different needs, might provide differential employee motivation and performance levels. This study and future research issues are discussed.
Kruse details the reasons profit sharing plans are implemented and the systemic factors within firms, particularly in relation to unions, that influence whether or not they are successful. He presents evidence based on a unique database developed from 500 public U.S. firms - matched to firm performance over the period of 1979-1991 - on the two central theories related to profit sharing: 1) The Productivity Theory, and 2) the Stability Theory.
Many firms issue stock options to all employees. We consider three potential economic justifications for this practice: providing incentives to employees, inducing employees to sort, and employee retention. We gather data from three sources on firms’ stock option grants to middle managers. First, we directly calibrate models of incentives, sorting and retention, and ask whether observed magnitudes of option grants are consistent with each potential explanation. We also conduct a cross-sectional regression analysis of firms’ option-granting choices. We reject an incentives-based explanation for broad-based stock option plans, and conclude that sorting and retention explanations appear consistent with the data.
The paper examines the determinants and performance consequences of equity grants to senior-level executives, lower-level managers, and non-exempt employees of “new economy” firms. We find that the determinants of equity grants are significantly different in new versus old economy firms. We also find that employee retention objectives, which new economy firms rank as the most important goal of their equity grant programs, have a significant impact on new hire grants, but not subsequent grants. Our exploratory performance tests indicate that lower than expected grants and/or existing holdings of options are associated with poorer performance in subsequent years.
This paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm. We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the ‘separation and control’ issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears these costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence. We also provide a new definition of the firm, and show how our analysis of the factors influencing the creation and issuance of debt and equity claims is a special case of the supply side of the completeness of markets problem.The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776, Cannan Edition(Modern Library, New York, 1937) p. 700.
In the wake of the recent corporate scandals, ifs time to reconsider the assumptions underlying American-style stock-market capitalism. That heady doctrine - in which the market is king, success is measured in terms of shareholder value, and profits are an end in themselves - enraptured America for a generation, spread to Britain during the 1980s, and recently began to gain acceptance in Continental Europe. But now, many wonder if the American model is corrupt. The American scandals are not just a matter of dubious personal ethics or of rogue companies fudging the odd billion. And the cure for the problems will not come solely from tougher regulations. We must also ask more fundamental questions: Whom and what is a business for? And are traditional ownership and governance structures suited to the knowledge economy? According to corporate law, a company's financiers are its owners, and employees are treated as property and recorded as costs. But while that may have been true in the early days of industry, it does not reflect today's reality. Now a company's assets are increasingly found in the employees who contribute their time and talents rather than in the stockholders who temporarily contribute their money. The language and measures of business must be reversed. In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property. If, like many European companies, a business considers itself a wealth-creating community consisting of members who have certain rights, those members will be more likely to treat one another as valued partners and take responsibility for telling the truth. Such a community can also help repair the image of business by insisting that its purpose is not just to make a profit but to make a profit in order to do something better.
Compensation: Theory, Evidence, and Strategic Implications provides a comprehensive, research-based review of both the determinants and effects of compensation. Combining theory and research from a variety of disciplines, authors Barry Gerhart and Sara L. Rynes examine the three major compensation decisions-pay level, pay structure, and pay delivery systems. provides a comprehensive, research-based review of both the determinants and effects of compensation. Combining theory and research from a variety of disciplines, authors Barry Gerhart and Sara L. Rynes examine the three major compensation decisions-pay level, pay structure, and pay delivery systems.Primarily intended for graduate students in human resource management, psychology, and organizational behavior courses, this book is also an invaluable reference for compensation management consultants and organizational development specialists.
La presente obra presenta una combinación de análisis económico, político y sociológico para exponer la diferencia cualitativa que existe entre los grupos pequeños y los grupos grandes, centrando su estudio en estos últimos.
In the wake of the recent corporate scandals, it's time to reconsider the assumptions underlying American-style stock-market capitalism. That heady doctrine--in which the market is king, success is measured in terms of shareholder value, and profits are an end in themselves--enraptured America for a generation, spread to Britain during the 1980s, and recently began to gain acceptance in Continental Europe. But now, many wonder if the American model is corrupt. The American scandals are not just a matter of dubious personal ethics or of rogue companies fudging the odd billion. And the cure for the problems will not come solely from tougher regulations. We must also ask more fundamental questions: Whom and what is a business for? And are traditional ownership and governance structures suited to the knowledge economy? According to corporate law, a company's financiers are its owners, and employees are treated as property and recorded as costs. But while that may have been true in the early days of industry, it does not reflect today's reality. Now a company's assets are increasingly found in the employees who contribute their time and talents rather than in the stockholders who temporarily contribute their money. The language and measures of business must be reversed. In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property. If, like many European companies, a business considers itself a wealth-creating community consisting of members who have certain rights, those members will be more likely to treat one another as valued partners and take responsibility for telling the truth. Such a community can also help repair the image of business by insisting that its purpose is not just to make a profit but to make a profit in order to do something better.
This paper compares the performance of 229 'New Economy' firms offering broad-based stock options to that of their non-stock option counterparts. A simple comparison of these firms reveals that the former have higher shareholder returns, Tobin's "q" and new knowledge generation. Multivariate analysis using panel data also suggests that the adoption of a stock option plan results in higher levels of value added per employee. However, we do not find evidence that these plans result in superior growth in Tobin's "q" or new knowledge generation. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2002.
In this paper I argue that corporate finance theory, empirical research, practical applications, and policy recommendations are deeply rooted in an underlying theory of the firm. I also argue that while the existing theories have delivered very important and useful insights, they seem to be quite ineffective in helping us cope with the new type of firms that are emerging. I outline the characteristics that a new theory of the firm should satisfy and how such a theory could change the way we do corporate finance, both theoretically and empirically. Introduction For a relatively young researcher like myself, there is a very strong tendency to look at the history of corporate finance and be overwhelmed by the giants of the recent past. A field that 40 years ago was little more than a collection of cookbook recipes that reflected practitioners' common sense is today a bona fide discipline, taught not only to future practitioners but also to doctoral students, both in business schools and ...
Toward a theory of the incentive effects of broad-based stock plans Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Denver. r21 Bloom, Relationships among risk, incentive pay, and organizational performance
- M M Bloom
- G Milkovich
Bloom, M. 2002. Toward a theory of the incentive effects of broad-based stock plans. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Denver. r21 Bloom, M. & Milkovich, G. 1998. Relationships among risk, incentive pay, and organizational performance. Academy of Management Journal, 41: 283-297