The pattern of diffusion of employee share-ownership schemes in Britain: some key findings

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Abstract
Traditionally the British industrial relations system has been based on an adversarial collective bargaining process. Periodically attempts have been made to introduce supplementary joint problem-solving arrangements, but the available evidence indicates that their maintenance and diffusion has been relatively limited. This historical record needs to be improved upon at the present time in order to avoid the emergence of an institutional vacuum in the system as union organization and collective bargaining coverage have declined. To this end, the government has actively sought to encourage the take-up of employee share-ownership arrangements throughout the 1980s by the provision of tax incentives for their adoption. The growth of employee share-ownership arrangements in the 1980s has been noted, but little evidence exists concerning their pattern of diffusion. In this paper we utilize data drawn from both the 1984 and 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys. Specifically we examine two leading research questions: the roles of the existing employee–management relationship and the larger industry influence as factors in shaping the take-up of these schemes. These, and other, infuences are tested using multivariate statistical analysis, with strong support emerging for the influence of these two factors. The implications of the analysis and findings are that tax incentives have stimulated the growth of such arrangements, and in particular have helped spread them beyond the relatively small sub-set of organizations which have traditionally innovated in the industrial relations area. However, some important questions remain as to whether the influence of the larger industry example will help the maintenance of such arrangements over the course of time.