Share capitalism and worker wellbeing

Abstract

We show that worker wellbeing is determined not only by the amount of compensation workers receive but also by how compensation is determined. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been preoccupied with individual performance-related pay, we find that the receipt of a range of group-performance schemes (profit shares, group bonuses and share ownership) is associated with higher job satisfaction. This holds conditional on wage levels, so that pay methods are associated with greater job satisfaction in addition to that coming from higher wages. We use a variety of methods to control for unobserved individual and job-specific characteristics. We suggest that half of the share-capitalism effect is accounted for by employees reciprocating for the “gift”; we also show that share capitalism helps dampen the negative wellbeing effects of what we typically think of as “bad” aspects of job quality.

The Performance Pay Premium and Wage Dispersion in Britain

“…It is difficult to make simple policy prescriptions based on the analyses of the PP premium presented here and its effects on the wage distribution. Although there have been calls for government to curb performance payments made to top executives, bankers and other highly paid professionals, recent studies for Britain suggest that PP tends to account for a relatively small percentage of most employees' earnings (Bryson et al ., ; Bryan and Bryson, ) and most firms' wage bills (Forth et al ., ). If, as much of the economic literature indicates, PP is a useful tool for firms to incentivise effort and attract more able individuals to work in environments where they are prepared to shoulder some of the risk inherent in linking pay to performance, it is hard to argue that firms should not be able to pay for performance.…”

The good, the bad and the ugly of lockdowns during Covid-19

“…Economic: unhappy workers are typically less productive, in particular in jobs that require sociability and problem solving (Bryson et al [ 17 ]). If an economy can raise the rate of growth of productivity, by ensuring their workers are happier, then the trend growth of national output can pick up.…”

Coronavirus Crisis: Government Aid That Also Promotes Employee Ownership

“…EO typically increases the wealth (Blasi and Kruse, 2019) and wages of employees (Kardas et al, 1998). Moreover, EO improves workers' quality of life (Bryson, 2016;Erdal, 2014).…”