Invitation to participate in a new ESOP research study.
Dr. Kim (Chatham University) and I are conducting a new research project to examine the perceptions of governance and culture within ESOP companies. We hope to identify ESOP companies willing to participate in this study by May 31st to allow data collection and analysis to be completed by October in order to share the results with the participating companies during Employee Ownership Month.
Our research question is:
To what extent do perceptions of company culture and governance vary based on position (Supervisor or Subordinate), gender (Male, Female, Non-binary or other, Prefer not to say), Tenure (Years with current firm), Employee Owner (yes, no).
Background: Prior research has identified a preference of a stewardship governance/culture within employee-owned companies. However, the respondents were limited to one senior leader from each participating company which may introduce self-bias errors. The purpose of this study is to re-examine this relationship amongst a larger group of employees of the company.
Principal Investigators are: Dr. Richard Van Doel with the Indiana Center for Employee Ownership, and Dr. Jungook Kim Assistant Professor, Department of Business and Entrepreneurship, Chatham University.
What to expect, or what is involved? The research will consist of administering the Stewardship Climate Scale (18 questions) and approximately 5 demographic questions to the company employees. The demographic questions will be used to determine position, gender, tenure, and status as an employee owner to evaluate potential variances within these sub-groups. Execution of the survey should take less than 10 minutes. Preferably the survey will be administered electronically via an E-mail invite, a web-link, or text to phone, assistance will be required in providing contact information or distributing the web-link. Alternatively, the survey can be provided in paper format.
Confidentiality: The information provided by you during the study will remain confidential. The raw data collected from the survey instruments will be held by the researcher. The summary data from the research study will be provided to the study participants. The results from the study may be published; however, the names of companies and individual employees participating in the study will not be identified. Additionally, you may withdraw participation at any time.
If you are interested in participating in this study or if you have additional questions please contact me at rick.vandoel@inceo.org