Developing an Ownership Culture with Employee Share Purchase Plans: Evidence from France

Positive effects of employee participation on organizational performance are closely linked to the implementation of a specific corporate culture always referred to as ‘ownership culture’. This issue can be stimulated through employee share purchase plans (ESPP). This article will investigate how to implement a successful ESPP. In order to do so, we review the literature on employees’ investment decisions about their employer’s shares. We present in another section the data and methodology of the empirical study. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with French experts specialising in ESPP’s implementation. We use the content analysis technique to analyse these interviews. Another section is dedicated to presenting the results of the qualitative research. We find that – offering leveraged employee ownership funds – ESPP’s general characteristics, – allowing employees to transfer their deferred profit sharing and gain sharing bonuses into the ESPP – discounting the share price, – giving employees payment facilities, – marketing expenses are particularly successful in stimulating employees’ investment. In the last section, we discuss and comment on our results.