Productivity Effects of Worker Participation in Decision Making and Profits: Statistical Estimation from the Example of Worker-Owned Firms in Plywood Manufacturing

摘要

Data over a 19-year period from 17 present and former worker-owned cooperative plants and 22 nonworker-owned conventional plants manufacturing softwood plywood show little significant difference between the two types of plants for individual study years in operations and performance. Multivariate production functions with pooled data for all years modeling the relationship of capital and labor inputs to output measured in physical units and in units of value added by manufacture show differences (statistically significant for physical output functions) in coefficients for long-run capacity output, indicating lower capital/labor ratios for cooperative plants. With uncorrected data, cooperative plants show lower value-added capacity output than conventional plants, offset by higher capacity utilization, so that the measure of total productivity combining both functions shows no significant difference between the two types of plants. Corrected to a comparable materials-cost basis, value-added output for cooperatives is estimated as 18% above that for conventional plants.