THE EMERGENCE AND CONSEQUENCES OF STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY FIRM: AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH TO THE ORGANIZATIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF INEQUALITY

This dissertation explores the ways in which institutional organizational theory can enhance our understanding of how organizational structures that shape social inequality emerge, diffuse, and persist over time. More specifically, in three distinct papers, I examine the institutionalization of stock-based compensation practices in the contemporary global economy and the implications of these practices for broader patterns of income and wealth inequality. The first paper connects recent theories of managerial power to neoinstitutional theory in order to examine changes to executive stock option practices in the wake of the recent corporate scandals. In the second paper, I analyze how broad-based stock option practices are transferring from the US to India as technology production becomes more global. Finally, the third paper focuses directly on the consequences of employee ownership by analyzing variation in patterns of access to, and wealth generated by, different types of broad-based stock compensation for different demographic groups. Taken together, the three papers constitute a general inquiry into the emergence of stock-based compensation in the global economy and the consequences for inequality, and reveal how institutional organizational theory can provide important and novel insights into the structuration of new forms of wealth accumulation and stratification within contemporary capitalism.