Providing Business Information to Production Workers: Correlates of Compensation and Profitability

Abstract

This study investigates some of the effects of a company's providing production workers with information on its financial condition, productivity, and relative standing in the labor market. Analyzing survey responses of business executives from 106 firms together with financial data on the companies from COMPUSTAT II for 1984, the authors find that information-sharing was positively related to the level of wages and benefits and unrelated to productivity in both union and nonunion businesses, and that it had a significant negative relationship to profits and cash flows in nonunion businesses.