Between ESOPs, EOTs and Mondragon cooperatives : the institutional design of Slovenia's employee ownership cooperative act

Gonza, Tej (author)

Purpose – This paper examines Slovenia’s Employee Ownership Cooperative Act (EOCA), adopted in 2025, which provides a novel legislative framework for the Slovenian Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) model. The purpose is to analyze how the EOCA translates its statutory objective of “long-term and stable participation of as many employees as possible in ownership” into a concrete institutional design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a comparative-institutional and design-based approach. Drawing on existing empirical and theoretical literature on employee ownership, it analyses the EOCA as an institutional response rather than as an evaluation of outcomes. Findings – The institutional analysis identifies five interdependent mechanisms of the Slovenian ESOP model, which are designed to address some of the historical challenges associated with employee ownership. Additionally, the paper describes the fiscal incentives and regulatory framework created by the EOCA. Research limitations/implications – The paper does not assess actual outcomes of the EOCA but provides an ex ante institutional design analysis. Future research should examine adoption rates, study implementation practices at the firm-level, analyze governance and look at long-term outcomes as new employee-owned firms emerge under the novel legislative framework in Slovenia. Practical implications – The paper provides practitioners, policymakers, advisors and employee ownership organizations with a detailed explanation of the Slovenian ESOP framework, including the institutional design, description of the fiscal incentives and the outline of the regulatory framework. Originality/value – This paper provides the first systematic academic analysis of the EOCA. It contributes to the literature by presenting a novel institutional design that combines elements of different employee-ownership (EO) models within a single legal and fiscal framework, offering replicable insights for jurisdictions seeking similar initiatives.

• Language: English
• Keywords: employee ownership, ESOPs, institutional design, tax incentives, EOTs, Employee Ownership Trust, Mandragon cooperatives
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 85-104
• Numbering: Vol. 9, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-186626
• UDC: 334.73
• ISSN on article: 2514-765X
• DOI: 10.1108/JPEO-12-2025-0067
• COBISS.SI-ID: 279911171
• Publication date in RUL: 03.09.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of participation and employee ownership
• Publisher: Emerald
• ISSN: 2514-765X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 229862147

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: lastništvo zaposlenih, ESOP, institucionalna zasnova, davčne spodbude, EOT, sklad v lasti zaposlenih, zadruge Mondragon, lastništvo delnic, zaposleni