Employee Participation and Ownership Award

Employee Participation and Ownership: Award Program

The Foundation for Enterprise Development announced their annual award program for promising research by emerging scholars in the domain of broad-based employee participation and ownership. The purpose of the award program is to identify innovative research in management or management-related disciplines that considers high-impact ideas in the context of business and society’s needs for employee empowerment, participative workforces, and wealth creation through broad-based equity and profit-sharing mechanisms. Research that has broad implications for practice and/or policy, and that addresses pressing economic and/or social problems are especially appropriate for this award.

Employee Participation and Ownership Research topics may include (but are not limited to):

1. The incidence of firms and workers with broad-based financial participation (e.g., employee equity ownership, profit sharing, stock options, employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) and other forms of equity and profit participation) and decision-making participation (autonomous work teams, flat organizations, non-managers on boards of directors, succession planning, and other employee involvement processes)
2. The effects on firm performance (e.g., productivity, profitability, investment, and employment) and individual performance of various forms of financial and decision-making participation, and the individual and group behaviors that link participation to performance
3. The effects on worker outcomes (e.g., pay, job security, training, turnover, stress, satisfaction, loyalty, relations with management) of various forms of financial and decision-making participation.
4. The creation, growth, survival, and stability of firms with financial and/or decision-making participation
5. The relation of financial and decision-making participation to corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, and sustainability
6. Worker-management relations and human resource practices in firms with financial and/or decision-making participation
7. The implications of research in this area for practical decisions on work organization, human resource practices, investment, and other issues
8. Mechanisms and learnings from broad-based employee/worker ownership that advance more workforce financial inclusiveness, ownership, and participation in digital-based “gig” business (e.g., UBER, Fiverr, Mechanical Turk).

Up to three individual awards will be available and named as “The Emerging Scholar Award in Employee Participation and Ownership” with sponsorship by The Foundation for Enterprise Development.

The recipient(s) of the award each receive a plaque, $1500 award from the Foundation for Enterprise Development, and recognition at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting during the Human Resource (HR) division’s breakfast ceremony.

Nominations from as diverse a population as possible are encouraged.

Employee Participation and Ownership: Award Eligibility

1. Applicants must be doctoral students in good standing with their educational institution, untenured Assistant or untenured Associate Professors or post-docs within 5 years of receiving a doctoral degree.
2. Their institution must be a regionally accredited college or university.
3. Students worldwide are welcome to apply, but all materials must be submitted in English.
4. Applicants must be enrolled full-time or working on their dissertation research for an equivalent of full-time enrollment.
5. Doctoral student applicants must have had their dissertation proposals approved by their dissertation committee or supervisor(s) prior to application; applicants must have not yet formally defended their dissertation. Assistant professors must submit an unpublished paper.
6. Applicants must have no current existing financial relationship with the Foundation for Enterprise Development.
7. Eligible research may be within the management disciplines, or in any management-related discipline (including, but not limited to, industrial relations or human resource management).

Employee Participation and Ownership: Award Criteria

1. Relevance and importance, in relation to the purpose of the award
2. Scholarly contribution
3. Clarity of application materials

Employee Participation and Ownership: Post-Award Commitment

• Award is to be distributed in a single payment. No budgetary restrictions will be placed on the use of these funds. The award recipient will be liable for any tax liabilities associated with the award.
• One year after the award, recipients will submit a one-page report summarizing the status of their research to the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

Employee Participation and Ownership: Award Nominations Procedures

1. Employee Participation and Ownership Application form
2. 2-3 page abbreviated Curriculum Vitae
3. 1-2 page cover letter discussing your research interests and experience, and career plans
4. 8-10 page summary of proposed dissertation research, dissertation research in progress, or other proposed research. If the candidate has completed their doctorate, please submit an unpublished paper instead of the summary. A reference should be made to the relevance of your unpublished research to the purpose of this award as outlined above
5. One letter of recommendation from a professor familiar with your research plans. [At the recommender’s discretion, this element of the application may be submitted separately from the application email, either via postal mail or email]