- Profit sharing
Profit sharing, when used as a special term, refers to various
incentive plans introduced bybusiness es that provide direct or indirect payments toemployee s that depend on company's profitability in addition to employees' regularsalary andbonus es. Inpublicly traded companies these plans typically amount to allocation ofshares to employees.The profit sharing plans are based on predetermined
economic sharing rules that define the split of gains between the company as a principal and the employee as an agent.Moffatt, Mike. (2008)About.com " [http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/sharingrule.htm Sharing Rule] " Economics Glossary; Terms Beginning with S. Accessed June 19, 2008.] For example, suppose the profits are x, which might be a random variable. Before knowing the profits, the principal and agent might agree on a sharing rule s(x). Here, the agent will receive s(x) and the principal will receive the residual gain x-s(x).Europe
Management's share of profits
The share of profits paid to the management, or to the
Board of Directors is sometimes called the tantième [ [http://www.ubs.com/1/e/about/bterms/content_m.html] UBS Dictionary of Banking: Letter M, "management's share of profits"] [ [http://www.eurofound.eu.int/emire/GERMANY/SHAREOFPROFITS-DE.html 'Share of profits'] ] . ThisFrench language term is generally applied in describing the business and finance practices of certain European countries -, including Germany, France, Belgium, and Sweden. It is usually paid in addition to the manager's (or director's) fixed salary and bonuses (bonuses usually depend on profits as well, and often bonuses and tantieme are treated as the same thing); laws vary from country to country.USA
In the
United States , a profit sharing plan can be set up where all or some of the employee's profit sharing amount can be contributed to aretirement plan . These are often used in conjunction with 401(k) plans.Gainsharing
Gainsharing is a program that returns cost savings to the employees, usually as a lump-sum bonus. It is a productivity measure, as opposed to profit-sharing which is a profitability measure. There are three major types of gainsharing:
*Scanlon plan: This program dates back to the 1930s and relies on committees to create cost-sharing ideas
*Rucker plan: This plan also uses committees, but although the committee structure is simpler the cost-saving calculations are more complex.
*Improshare: Improshare stands for "Improved productivity through sharing" and is a more recent plan. With this plan, a standard is developed that identifies the expected number of hours to produce something, and any savings between this standard and actual production are shared between the company and the workers. [Citation
last =Gomez-Mejia
first =Luis R.
author-link =
last2 =Balkin
first2 =David B.
author2-link =
title =Managing Human Resources
place =Upper Saddle River, New Jersey
publisher =Pearson Prentice Hall
year =2007
volume =
edition =Fifth
url =
doi =
id =
isbn =0-13-187067-x ]ee also
*
Retirement plans in the United States
*macroeconomics of profitsharing -www.profitsharinguprising.com References
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