Contrary to what has been assumed implicitly by lawmakers, by no means all shareholders (notably the rank-and-file employees), of the newly privatised companies are real co-owners of the share capital. In order to address this question, we need sharper analytical tools than those used in the conventional analyses of the subject. Put differently, a set of criteria identifying the types of economic ownership associated with shareholdings of a different size must be developed.Privatisation converts workers into merely formal owners of share capital, while real ownership is vested in management. Employee ownership is vulnerable to success as well as to failure. If the firm is prosperous and profitable, increasingly valuable shares will encourage their sale to outside investors. On the other hand, the worker, like the average person, is induced to sell his shares when the price declines as he is usually not in a financial position where he could afford to take a loss on his investment. In addition, the mechanisms of control, and especially workers' inability to determine the policies of their companies, discourage many employees from keeping their shares.From the standpoint of the governmental makers of the privatisation policy, shares given to employees and workers in particular were an attempt at buying their neutrality towards this policy, but turned out to play a very useful latent function consisting in them being the factor of internal divisions and a seed-plot of conflicts.View full textDownload full textKeywordsPrivatisation, Economic Ownership, Employee Ownership, Managerial Ownership, PolandRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2011.537455
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