Research On Motivation And Economic Consequences Of Employee Stock Ownership Plan In Companies Without Actual Controller

China has deepened its SOE reform on a number of occasions,including the introduction of multiple economic components for mixed ownership reform and the introduction of employee share ownership schemes.In practice,some SOEs have been transformed into companies without actual controllers after restructuring.Companies without actual controllers have problems such as unclear governance structures,difficulties in standardising their operations,and are prone to control struggles.Companies that introduce employee share ownership schemes in this context also face certain challenges for the development of the company.For this reason,the thesis selects companies that do not implement employee share ownership plans and conducts a specific study on the motivations and economic consequences of their implementation.Based on a review of domestic and international literature on firms without effective controllers,the motivations and effects of employee share ownership plans,and management’s self-interested behaviour,the thesis uses a case study approach and an event study approach based on principal-agent theory,two-factor theory,and managerial power theory to examine the motivations and economic consequences of implementing an employee share ownership plan for Gree Electric after it became a firm without effective controllers following its hybrid reform.It concludes that management used the employee share ownership plan to subscribe large amounts of shares to achieve self-interest motivation,poor employee motivation,no improvement in financial performance,poor capital market performance and some improvement in corporate governance mechanisms.It also makes recommendations that companies should establish an effective monitoring mechanism,appropriately increase the voice of employees and the proportion of ordinary employee shareholding,and choose the right timing for the introduction.The innovation of the thesis is mainly reflected in two aspects.One is the novel perspective of the research,which examines the motivation for employee share ownership from the perspective of managerial self-interest.It breaks through the limitations of existing studies,which focus on the independent analysis of corporate governance,employee motivation and management self-interest and ignore their overall connection.Based on managerial power theory,the thesis integrates managerial self-interest motives throughout the article and analyses the impact of managerial self-interest behaviour on other motives and economic consequences.Second,the research is novel in that companies without effective controllers are characterised by fragmented shareholding structures,high levels of corporate democracy,inefficient decision-making and susceptibility to managerial turbulence.By examining the behaviour of employee share ownership in firms without effective controllers,we analyse how these firm characteristics affect the motivation and consequences of the introduction of share ownership,and provide a reference for subsequent equity reforms in state-owned enterprises.