ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on differences in a particular aspect of financial reward - financial participation - and how it varies according to context. It also discusses the rationales for financial participation. The chapter considers the antecedents that may make financial participation more or less likely. Financial participation represents the means by which employees have a stake either in the physical ownership of the organization or its overall performance. As such it may provide employees with a direct reward in the performance of the firm and, in providing the basis for broader staff engagement, with issues likely to impact on performance. Financial participation is fundamentally different to voice based participation. The latter may be relatively weak or strong, but in the end is a dynamic process, whose outcome directly depends on the conscientious and immediate choices of employees. The outcome of some forms of employee participation may have no relationship at all to individual effort.
