A Comparative Study Of Employee Stock Ownership Models

ESOP originated in the 1960th of the United States, since the scheme's successful implementation and very good incentive effects in the enterprise, ESOP has been used in the enterprise by Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan and other developed countries in a short time, and all these countries achieved very good results. ESOP began to be implemented in the enterprise of our country in 1980th, and it has been actively exploring. It started very early in foreign countries to make researches on ESOP, which have good quantity and many different types of a more comprehensive study. Domestic researches not only started late, in comparison , but also are bad than abroad researches in quantity and quality .It is in this context, I chose the aspect of ESOP as my research topic. This article makes an comparative analysis on some foreign countries which implemented ESOP successfully at some extent,on the basic of the current research situation of ESOP ,and then makes models in our country compared with international countries. From above comparison, I draw up two suggestion modes for state-owned enterprises and listed companies in our country. At last, I summarize the problems on the implementation of ESOP in our country at this stage and propose solutions with each problem.This paper is divided into five parts:The first chapter is the preface, which firstly describe the research background and significance of the research. The practice of the United States and the investigation conducted by the Guangdong region of China have proved that effective ESOP is good to improve production efficiency in enterprise. ESOP of our country obtained some results in the course of implementation; however, there are gaps with the expected results. So how to make the effect of ESOP more prominent is the background and research significance of this paper. Then this chapter analyzes the recent status of searches on the ESOP in home and abroad and makes a brief description of these researches. End of this chapter describes the research methods and the main research contents of the paper.Chapter II gives the specific definition of ESOP and makes a list of four characteristics about ESOP, as well as its theoretical foundation: the principal-agent theory, the incentive theory, the corporate governance theory, and the human capital theory. And these theories are briefly described.Chapter III lists several foreign employee stock ownership models: The American Stock Ownership Trust, The Japan's Employee Stock model, the privatization of Eastern European countries and the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, The Western European Employee Stock Ownership. This chapter makes details of these types of ownership models for implementation and analyzes the features of various models. Then it cites ten main types of employee stock ownership models in our country at the present stage: the dry stock system, the staff representative holdings, the annual salary increase on the stock system, the trade unions or ESOT stock ownership, the stock simulation, the shell shareholdings, the loan stock system, the net assets to buy the system, the share buy-back system and the trust holdings. It also briefly analyzes their characteristics.Chapter Four is the comparison between Employee Stock Ownership models. This article compares some international employee stock ownership patterns and analyzes the sameness of these models in terms of management institutions, social protection and so on. And it find the differences from the social conditions, goals and measures, human resource management under the environment of implementation of ESOP, the characteristics of ESOP and the problems of these four countries. And then compares them with our models. From above comparisons, pros and cons of each model will be found and so I draw up two suggestion modes for state-owned enterprises and listed companies in our country on the basis of these comparisons.Chapter IV is based on the comparison drawn from Chapter Four. It sums up the six problems we faced in the course of practicing ESOP of our country at the present stage: first, there are problems in the theoretical understanding of ESOP; Second, it lacks of standardized uniform legal basis; Third, there are deviations in some enterprises'ESOP at the point of departure; Fourth, the employee-owned source of funds is inadequate; Fifth ,the main shareholders'legal status is unclear; Sixth, the lack of preferential policies to support in government finance and taxation aspects. Then it comes up with the appropriate solutions. First, the correct understanding of the role of employee ownership; Second, accelerate the construction of our laws; Third, purchase shares in line with the principle of voluntary, while reasonably distribute the equity ratio; Fourth, improve the insufficient purchasing power of staff, strengthening the financing environment; Fifth, make a clear legal status of the principal shareholders; Sixth, the Government should formulate preferential policies to support the implementation of ESOP companies.Then, a summary of the article was made. It makes summary about research highlight of the thesis and four innovation points: First, it found out the sameness and differences about the four International employee stock option models which are all successful; Second, it make a comparison between our country and the international countries, and analyzes the differences; Third, It comes up with two types of Employee Stock Ownership models for China's state-owned enterprises and listed companies under the current situation; Fourth, according to the preceding comparative analysis, it identifies the problems when we implement ESOP currently in China , and address these issues to sum up the corresponding solutions.Finally, the Outlook section of this article summarizes the shortcomings and problems which should be studied in more depth later: first, the paper didn't make the detailed solutions without in-depth research with the problems, therefore, a more detailed and professional study of each solution should be made; Second, research is limited time to read the information is also not comprehensive enough Therefore, the two proposed shareholding pattern may have shortages as insufficient time and materials, so continuous improvement of the two modes should be studied.