• Know different ways of involving broader groups of employees in the ownership rights of: 1) control, and the financial rights of 2) share of profits, 3) share of capital gains
• Understand how democratic forms of management can be developed with or without direct ownership rights
• Be aware of different instruments of employee ownership rights to motivate, bond, improve cooperation between employees - employee financial participation as part of a firms HRM policies
• Understand possible problems in relation to employee participation in different types of organizations
• Understand the context dependence, that is, drivers and barriers for different forms of employee participation both in relation to financial aspects and organizational challenges
• Understand different theories applied to employee financial participation - both economic models, behavioral - and organizational theories
• Get an interdisciplinary understanding of workplace democracy
• Knowledge about different forms of employees financial participation - at different points in time and geography

The course is multidisciplinary. The theme lies in the crossroad of economic theory, corporate governance and organizational sociology and includes also psychological and HRM aspects. Workplace democracy is a recurrent theme in the political debate and related to the motivation and empowerment of the employees. What happens when employees own their own company or when they have parts of the rights connected to ownership? Why are there so few majority employee owned companies in Scandinavia while they are much more widespread in US, Italy, France and Spain. We look both at the different theories and at the practical implementation of different models of workplace democratization and different degrees of employee’s financial participation.

Theories:
• Corporate Governance, theory of ownership – ownership rights, stakeholder theory
• the economic theory of the labor-managed firm
• theories about participation and motivation
• theory about different types of organizations and implementation
• Drivers and barriers for employee ownership
 

Different model of employee participation around the world:
• The US ESOPs (with 10-15 mill employees!)
• The Mondragon worker cooperatives in Spain
• Worker coops in Italy, France, and …
• Employee ownership in transition countries
• The discussion on Economic Democracy and wage-earner-funds in Denmark and Sweden
• Self-management in former Yugoslavia
• Participation in only some of the ownership rights – profit sharing schemes, codetermination/Industrial democracy  – employee participation in boards – Germany, Scandinavia
 

Different stages in the majority employee owned company
• Establishing process 
• Employee attitudes toward starting/going into an employee owned company
• Organization of employee involvement in decision making
• Problems of finance and exit/entry of new employee owners

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