All-employee plans offer participation to all employees (subject to certain qualifying conditions such as a minimum length of service).
In the United States, private companies often use employee share ownership to maintain the political feasibility of the founding business plan and culture after the founders have left.
Generally, the most senior employees own a majority stake and represent the leading voice in the company that employs them.
Only a few, most notably the U.S., the UK, and Ireland have significant tax laws to encourage broad-based employee share ownership.
In several countries, there are special tax-qualified plans that allow employees to buy stock either at a discount or with matching shares from the company.
Options, and all the plans listed below, can be given to any employee under whatever rules the company creates, with limited exceptions in various countries.
Phantom stock pays a future cash bonus equal to the value of a certain number of shares.
This is accepted as meaning where 25 percent or more of the ownership of the company is broadly held by all or most employees (or on their behalf by a trust).
Different forms of employee ownership, and the principles that underlie them, have contributed to the emergence of an international social enterprise movement.
[12][13] The most celebrated (and studied) case of a group of companies based wholly on co-operative principles is the Spanish Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.
[15] Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOPs) became widespread for a short period in the UK under the government of Margaret Thatcher, particularly following the Transport Act 1985, which deregulated and then privatised bus services.