Vom Kapitalismus zur Marktwirtschaft durch Mitarbeiterteilhabe - Eine empirische Analyse von Kreditgenossenschaften zur Identifikation möglicher Konstruktionselemente für ein Mitarbeiterteilhabemodell

The starting point of this thesis is the fundamental criticism of capitalism: capitalists can engage in entrepreneurial activity; those who do not have enough money to run a business are excluded from competition and forced to find an entrepreneur to make a living, who makes them work to increase their profits.

The thesis aims to design an “employee-participation-model” that enables people to shape companies with their labour alone and to participate in the enterprise's earnings. The goal is to defuse the dominant position of capitalists, and also the inefficiency resulting from the principal-agent-problem, to strengthen the motivation of employees and to enhance their swarm creativity.

Worker cooperatives, kibbutzim, partnership companies and Titos workers' self-management companies came close to the desired “employee-participation-model”. Their failure was dominated by the members' unwillingness to altruistically retain profits to finance cooperative's investments.

In contrast, it is common practice for cooperative banks to retain most of their profits. Therefore, the secret to success inherent in cooperative banks is explored in order to apply it to the “employee-participation-model”. In view of the author’s expectation, the result of this investigation is disappointing: evidence suggests that entrepreneurial decisions in today's typical cooperative banks are formally made by members, but the direction is given to them by the management board, who pursue their own interests. Thus, the success of cooperative banks does not contribute to improving the “employee-participation-model”, because the participation of employees in decision-making is a key objective of the model.

A way out is provided by companies typical of our market economy: Shareholders and family entrepreneurs are willing to retain profits because they expect that, thanks to the investments financed with profits, their profit will increase when they sell their shareholding.

To ensure equality for employees and entrepreneurs, the cooperative model is developed further: employees have a say and participate not only in current profits, but also in the expected company results. They receive a payment when they leave the company that is based on expected profits. Then, when voting for profit retention, there is no need to appeal to the solidarity of the employees.