Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Worker Attitudes Towards Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing And Variable Pay, Fidan A. Kurtulus, Douglas Kruse, Joseph Blasi

Fidan A Kurtulus

Using the NBER Shared Capitalism Database comprised of over 40,000 employee surveys from 14 firms, we investigate worker attitudes towards employee ownership, profit sharing, and variable pay. Specifically, our study uses detailed survey questions on preferences over profit sharing, forms of employee ownership like company stock and stock option ownership, as well as preferences over variable pay in general, to explore how preferences for these different types of output-contingent pay vary with worker risk aversion, residual control, and views of coworkers and management. Our key results show that, on average, workers want at least a part of their compensation to …