Personalägda företag - liberalism eller socialdemokrati? : En jämförande fallstudie av personalägande i Sverige och USA

Sammanfattning: This Master’s thesis examines the interesting paradox of why employee ownership is morecommon in the United States of America than in Sweden, when other forms of rights andbenefits for employees are more developed in the latter. This paradox boils down tounderstanding the characteristics of employee ownership and its relationship to thetraditional political left-right scale. In other words, from a political point of view, shouldemployee ownership be seen as a left or right phenomenon? Instead of approaching thisquestion from a philosophical angle about how things should be seen, this thesis uses a morepractical empirical approach. By comparing the institutions on macro-level in Sweden andthe United States, and applying the theory of ‘varieties of capitalism’, the goal is tounderstand in which institutional and political contexts employee ownership flourish. This isdone using a comparative case study design, focusing on historical and institutionaldifferences between how the two countries regulate their political economies. The theory of‘varieties of capitalism’ is used in the form of two ideal types, liberal- and social(coordinated) market economy, which are used as analytical tools to examine institutionaldifferences. The aim of the study can be summarized by the two research questions: 1) Isemployee ownership a liberal or social-democratic phenomenon? and 2) Can the differencesin occurrence of employee ownership between Sweden and the United States be explainedusing the ideal types liberal- and social market economy? The findings indicate that employeeownership is in fact a liberal phenomenon, and that the ideal types and theory of ‘varieties ofcapitalism’ is useful for explaining this. The conclusion is that there seems to be a substitutioneffect between employee ownership and the Swedish model on the labor market. It seems likethe strong labor market- and welfare-state institutions in Sweden already provide employeesand employers with enough coordination, rights, benefits and influence to make the interestfor employee ownership too small. In contrast, the lack of strong institutions for coordinationbetween employees and employers in the liberal market economy of the United States seem tocreate a bigger need for companies to tie their employees closer to them. The fact thatemployee ownership is often created on the initiative of the company management alsostrengthens this hypothesis: employee ownership is a liberal phenomenon driven by thecorporations to compensate for the lack of strong labor market institutions in a liberaleconomy.