Beyster Fellows Symposium Participants Report on New Research on Employee Ownership

The Fellowship program of the School of Labor and Management Relations at Rutgers University held its mid-year fellows workshop in honor of Louis O. Kelso. The workshop was funded by John Menke of Menke Associates. The fellowship program is funded by generous grants from The Foundation for Enterprise Development (started by Robert Beyster), the Employee Ownership Foundation, and numerous individual donors.

This year, more than 28 papers were presented, including a number of case studies, theoretical works, works in progress, and completed empirical analyses. One of the more important findings came from Fidan Kurtulus of the University of Massachusetts and Douglas Kruse of Rutgers. They found that over the last decade, public companies with ESOPs had significantly less employment volatility, both up and down, than non-ESOP companies. Paige Ouimet of the University of North Carolina reported on her study showing that participants in public company ESOPs get higher compensation than those in non-ESOP companies. In a new study, she has preliminary results indicating that companies with broad-based options have lower turnover.

All of the papers can be accessed at this link.