With a growing prominence of sophisticated econometric research in the field of New Economics of Participation (NEP), it is of particular value to learn about real-world examples of participatory and labor-managed firms in the advanced market economies through extensive case studies. In this volume, the authors present such case studies.

This volume examines the different ways in which businesses can improve performance by cultivating more employee involvement in their jobs and in the organization itself. The first chapters review the history and empirical research in this area and make a case for greater employee participation in the workplace. Subsequent chapters survey the varieties of employee participation - quality of work, life programmes, quality circles, gain-sharing plans, self-directed work teams and employee ownership - with special attention to implementation. The final chapters summarize the success factors for better employee involvement systems.

Using data from an extensive study of employee-owned companies in Ohio, where employee ownership is a well-developed trend, this book offers a strong empirical portrait of firms with Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). It describes how these plans work and places their emergence and change in a historical context. John Logue and Jacquelyn Yates examine firms that have succeeded in employee ownership and those with failed plans. Some companies, they find, are committed to the concept of employee ownership, and others merely use ESOPs as a financing tool.Detailed information resulting from multiple surveys allows the authors to draw well-grounded conclusions regarding the question of why some employee-owned firms outperform others. The bottom line, they find, is that employee-owned firms that "do it all," implementing features such as employee participation and communication about finances, training, and cultural change, systematically outperform their conventional competitors. They also have an advantage over firms that understand employee ownership incompletely, if it all, and yet claim to adopt its methods.

With a growing prominence of sophisticated econometric research in the field of New Economics of Participation (NEP), it is of particular value to learn about real-world examples of participatory and labor-managed firms in the advanced market economies through extensive case studies. In this volume, the authors present such case studies.

This volume examines the different ways in which businesses can improve performance by cultivating more employee involvement in their jobs and in the organization itself. The first chapters review the history and empirical research in this area and make a case for greater employee participation in the workplace. Subsequent chapters survey the varieties of employee participation - quality of work, life programmes, quality circles, gain-sharing plans, self-directed work teams and employee ownership - with special attention to implementation. The final chapters summarize the success factors for better employee involvement systems.

What is the future shape of the American workplace? This question is the focus of a national debate as the country strives to find a system that provides a good standard of living for workers while allowing U.S. businesses to succeed at home and compete abroad. In this book, David Levine uses case studies and extensive evidence to show that greater employee involvement in the workplace can significantly increase both productivity and worker satisfaction. Employee involvement has many labels, including high-performance workplaces, continuous improvement, or total quality management. The strongest underlying theme is that frontline employees who are actually performing the work will always have insights about how to improve their tasks. Employee involvement includes a range of policies that, at the minimal end, permit workers to suggest improvement, and at the substantive end, create an integrated strategy to give all employees the ability, motivation, and authority to constantly improve the organization's operations. Despite the evidence of its benefits, substantive employee involvement remains the exception in the U.S. work force. Levine explores the obstacles to its spread, which include legal barriers, capital markets that discourage investment in people, organizational inertia, and the costs of implementation. Levine concludes with specific public policy recommendations for increasing the extent of employee involvement, including changes in government regulation of capital and labor markets to encourage long-term investment and labor-management cooperation. He recommends macroeconomic policies to sustain high employment, less regulation for high-involvement workplaces, and training in schools and on the job to teach high-involvement practices. He also suggests new roles for unions and provides a checklist for employers to assess their progress in implementing employee involvement. David I. Levine was on the staff of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and an associate professor in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics by the Firestone Library, Princeton University