Managerial Performance Differences between Labor-Owned and Participatory Capitalist Firms

摘要

This paper tests for differences in the managerial performance of micro and small firms, classified by capital-ownership configuration, be they labor-owned or participatory capitalist firms. Measures of managerial performance comprise indices of economic performance, profitability, financial structure, worker remuneration, and solvency. Explanators of these differences include the age of the firm, its economic sector of operations, its capital-ownership configuration and an ordinal measure of strategic risk. The evidence rejects Gibrat's law of proportional effects, in favor of the life cycle hypothesis. It also leads to inconclusive short-term effects and to a nondifferential role of the type of key capital-ownership configuration in a firm's long-term prospects.