642: Impact of High-Performance Work Practices on Employee Outcomes in Employee-Owned Companies (14363)

A central claim of scholarship on employee ownership (EO) is that it has the strongest impacts on employee outcomes when implemented in combination with other HR practices that are typically associated with high-performance work systems. However, our explanations for why these complementary practices are important remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we draw on theories about the psychology of ownership and the abilities-motivation-opportunities (AMO) framework from the industrial relations and HR literatures to theorize the effects of three types of what we call “ownership HRM” (OHRM) practices on employee attitudes and behaviors in a dataset of 881 employees in nine companies with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). We find that the extent to which employees perceive that they have influence, are engaged as owners through information sharing and business literacy training, and receive high quality communications about the ESOP have direct effects on organizational commitment, turnover intention, voice behavior, and helping behavior, and that these effects vary across these four outcomes. In addition, we find that psychological ownership moderates the impact of OHRM practices on employee attitudes and behaviors. Our findings reveal that there are multiple, complex pathways through which OHRM practices impact employee outcomes in EO companies, and a broader range of theoretical explanations for these impacts than has been captured in the literature.

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