Who Has A Better Idea? Innovation, Shared Capitalism, And HR Policies

The authors investigate the relationship of "Shared capitalist" compensation systems - profit/gainsharing, employee ownership, and stock options - to the culture for innovation and employees' ability and willingness to engage in innovative activity. Using a large dataset with over 25,000 employee surveys in over 200 worksites of a large multinational organization, they find that both shared capitalism compensation and high performance work policies contribute to these innovation outcomes. Owning company stock is the most consistently positive compensation variable in predicting both an innovation culture and willingness to engage in innovative activity.