The employee share ownership participation decision: An integrative review and agenda for future research

Broad-based employee share ownership (ESO) plans are a widely used form of employee compensation. Past reviews have focused on employee attitudes and organizational performance, offering limited insight into why employees participate or the duration of their participation. Further, ESO is rarely considered as a dynamic phenomenon despite most plans being a continuing form of employee compensation. These omissions impede theoretical developments and advice to practitioners. In a review of 48 publications, across multiple disciplines, we propose an integrative framework that identifies the antecedents and mechanisms of three interrelated ESO participation decisions (i.e., buy, contributions, and holdings) within the context of employee stock purchase (and similar) plans. Building on this integrative framework, we propose an agenda for future research that we believe to be most promising for theory development and practice: the temporal dynamics of ESO participation, the influence of contextual (i.e., organizational-level) factors, and methodological innovations.