Employee ownership and employee well-being: A systematic review

Most theories and empirical studies of employee ownership explain the relationship with performance as an outcome, and employee well-being positioned as a mediator (Goldstein, 1978; Klein, 1987; Aitken and Wood, 1989; Pierce et al., 1991; Connelly et al., 2010). Those that treat employee well-being as a focal construct focus on a particular form of ownership, well-being measure, industry, or country, or view it from diverging theoretical lenses. Surprisingly, no studies have synthesized them into a coherent story despite employee-owners being the focal actor and around 25 million employees being covered in any form of employee ownership program (e.g., ESOP or worker cooperative) in the U.S. alone. In this study, we aim to integrate theories and empirical findings from multiple fields on the effect of employee ownership on broad measures of subjective and objective well-being, from satisfaction, compensation, work-life balance, mental and physical health, job security, career opportunity, workplace safety, to turnover.