 Refounding the company as a social institution:democratizing employee ownership in French SMEs through collective transfers to employeesRefonder l’entreprise comme une institution sociale: démocratiser l’actionnariat salarié dans les PME françaises à travers la transmission collective aux salariésArnault Violet ()
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: The long-term survival of France's SMEs is a major economic and social challenge. The ageing of business owners, coupled with a decline in the number of company takeovers, threatens many SMEs, weakening the local economic fabric. Employee ownership, through collective transfers to employees, appears to be a relevant solution, enabling employees to buy out their company together. Despite its potential, collective transfers to employees are struggling to develop in French SMEs. Specific schemes such as the FCPE de reprise or the SCOP d'amorçage exist, but their implementation has often ended in failure, in contrast to international models such as the ESOP plan in the United States. This raises the question of the obstacles and levers to the development of employee ownership in French SMEs, as part of a collective transfer to employees. To answer this question, our research is based on an exploratory qualitative study of interviews with experts. This article highlights the obstacles and levers influencing the development of collective transfers of SMEs to employees, both in terms of existing schemes in France, such as the FCPE de reprise and the SCOP d'amorçage, and in terms of more structural dynamics on a national scale. Lastly, it suggests possible reforms to enhance the effectiveness and spread of the FCPE de reprise, with a view to conceiving the company as a social institution. Keywords: social institution; SME; collective transfer to employees; FCPE de reprise; employee buyout; employee stock ownership; employee ownership; capital concentration; responsible governance; economic sustainability; SCOP d'amorçage; employee ownership employee stock ownership employee buyout collective transfer to employees SME ESOP EOT SCOP cooperative responsible governance social institution economic sustainability wealth redistribution capital concentration economic inequality employee savings gift theory SCOP d'amorçage FCPE de reprise; cooperative; EOT; ESOP; SCOP d’amorçage; gift theory; employee savings; economic inequality; wealth redistribution; SCOP; rachat par les salariés; actionnariat salarié; transmission collective aux salariés; PME; coopérative; reprise entreprise; gouvernance responsable; institution sociale; durabilité économique; redistribution de la richesse; concentration du capital; partage de la valeur; inégalités économiques; épargne salariale; théorie du don (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Third Annual Rutgers–Oxford Employee Ownership Research Conference 2025, Rutgers-Oxford Kellogg College, Aug 2025, Oxford (UK), United Kingdom. https://smlr.rutgers.edu/rutgers-oxford-employee-ownership-research-conference Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05292818 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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