Employee Satisfaction in Labor-Owned and Managed Workplaces: Helping Climate and Participation Spillover to Non-Owners

Renée De Reuver, Brigitte Kroon, Damian Madinabeitia Olabarria and Unai Elorza Iñurritegui
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Renée De Reuver: Human Resource Studies, School of Social and Behavioral Science, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Brigitte Kroon: Human Resource Studies, School of Social and Behavioral Science, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Damian Madinabeitia Olabarria: Faculty of Engineering, Mondragon University, 20500 Arrasate, Spain
Unai Elorza Iñurritegui: Faculty of Engineering, Mondragon University, 20500 Arrasate, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: In contrast to shareholder-owned organizations, worker-owned cooperative organizations foster employee wellbeing such as employee satisfaction as an important outcome by itself. Due to expansions and economic fluctuations, larger worker-owned cooperations nowadays use mixtures of employment contracts resulting in varying shares of co-owners, contracted and temporary employees in workplaces. In the current paper, we research if this situation challenges the moral commitment of worker cooperatives to their employees, which derive from the cooperative philosophy on corporate responsibility. Where previous research contrasted employee wellbeing in worker cooperatives with share- holder owner organizations, this paper describes how various shares of co-owners in workplaces change mediating processes of helping climate and workplace participation and ultimately result in different levels of employee satisfaction. Archival data combined with survey data of 5907 employees in 99 hypermarkets were tested with multivariate analyses, and indicated that the helping climate and workplace participation positively mediated the association between the share of co-owners in hypermarkets and employee satisfaction. The findings imply that traditional worker-owned cooperatives, where a majority of all workers are owners, had more success in fostering cooperative values as a strategic outcome.

Keywords: co-ownership; worker-owned cooperative; participation; helping climate; employee satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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