Stakeholder drivers toward different types of employee ownership – with some Danish evidence

There are strong variations between countries concerning the frequency of different types of employee-owned firms. This relates to differences in the institutional settings – legislation related to employee ownership. However, the resources and attitudes of different stakeholders are also important. This concerns primarily the employees, but for employee takeovers the former owners also play a key role. To solve the capital problem external capital providers are also important stakeholders. The drivers of the stakeholders depend on their resources and their attitude to employee ownership with a distinction between individual and collective goals. The paper outlines a theory about how individual or collective attitudes result in different drivers in relation to different types of employee ownership, which are dominating in countries with a relatively many employee-owned firms: 1) The worker cooperative as known from Italy, France, and Spain including the Mondragon variant with a strong emphasis on employees’ individual accounts. 2) The British Employee Ownership Trust, EOT. 3) The US Employee Stock Ownership Plan, ESOP. The Slovenian type of Cooperative ESOP overlaps all three types. Denmark is used as a case to illustrate the theoretical points and the main features and possible consequences of a new law concerning employee takeovers are presented.