To Join or Not to Join? Factors Influencing Employee Share Plan Membership in a Multinational Corporation

Alex Bryson

No 361, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Abstract: Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidise the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a share ownership plan, we find considerable variation in joining among observationally equivalent workers and explore the reasons for the variation. Participation in the plan is higher the greater the potential pay-off from joining the share plan, which indicates that rational economic calculations affect the decision to join. But there is also evidence that psychological factors affect the decision to join. Some non members say they intend to join in the future, which means they forgo the benefits of immediate membership. The proportion of workers who purchase shares varies across workplaces beyond what we predict from worker characteristics. This suggests that co-worker behavior influences decisions. Indeed, workers say that they pay most attention to other workers and little attention to company HR management in their decision on joining.

Date: 2010-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/dp361_0-2.pdf

Related works:
Chapter: To join or not to join? Factors influencing employee share plan membership in a multinational corporation (2010)
Working Paper: To Join or Not to Join? Factors Influencing Employee Share Plan Membership in a Multinational Corporation (2010)
Working Paper: To join or not to join? Factors influencing employee share plan membership in a multinational corporation (2010)
Working Paper: To Join or Not to Join? Factors Influencing Employee Share Plan Membership in a Multinational Corporation (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nsr:niesrd:361

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research 2 Dean Trench Street Smith Square London SW1P 3HE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library & Information Manager ().