A Real Utopia Under What Conditions? The Economic and Social Benefits of Workplace Democracy in Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Young-Hyman, Trevor; Magné, Nathalie; Kruse, Douglas

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4147748

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Yet shared ownership and democratic control do not automatically negate inequality within worker cooperatives. Large-scale quantitative studies in France have found that worker cooperatives have a relatively lower pay differential among their highest and lowest earners than observed in conventional firms (Magne, 2017; Young-Hyman et al. , 2022) – but the pay gap between men and women within cooperative and conventional firms is similar (Magne, 2017).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequalities in democratic worker-owned firms by gender, race and immigration status: evidence from the first national survey of the sector

Reibstein

Schlachter

2023

JPEO

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PurposeWorker cooperative practitioners and developers often claim that democratic worker ownership advances egalitarianism within and beyond the workplace, but most of the empirical evidence in the USA is based on ethnographic case studies or small-scale surveys. This study aims to leverage the first national survey about individuals' experiences in these unique firms to test for the presence of inequalities by gender, race and immigration status in the broader sector.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a 2017 survey comprising a sample of 1,147 workers from 82 firms. This study focuses on measures of workplace benefits that capture material and psychological ownership, wealth accumulation, wages, workplace autonomy and participation in governance. This study uses ordinary least squares regression models with fixed effects alongside pooled models to determine the effects of gender, race, immigration status and the intersection of gender and race on these outcomes, both within and between firms.FindingsThis study finds no evidence of wage gaps by gender, race or immigration status within worker cooperatives, with job type, tenure and worker ownership status instead explaining within-firm variation in pay. Still, this study documents sector-wide disparities in material and non-material outcomes by gender, race and immigration status, reflecting differences in individual-level human capital and job characteristics as well as widespread occupational segregation and homophily.Originality/valueThe paper offers a novel contribution to the literature on workplace empowerment and inequality in participatory firms by analyzing race, gender and immigration status in the most robust dataset that has been collected on worker cooperatives in the USA.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%