Since efficient investors hold small amounts of stock in many companies, it wouldn't matter to them whether your company gave employee options on its own stock or in another company's stock, as long as both stocks were in the efficient portfolio. Furthermore, modern hedging theory shows that efficient investors can balance the risk of options by short selling the underlying stock. Hedging and diversification imply that efficient investors are only interested in the average return of their diversified portfolio, not whether one company or another succeeds. Notice that these same arguments would advise employees not to hold very much stock in their own company. Since I am a long term employee owner, this efficient market thinking seems less than complete.
Employee ownership is nearly the opposite of efficient investing.
Employee owners have significant holdings in one stock, and they are working to grow that value with less risk. Employee owners who have less stock are willing to forgo some immediate bonus in order to have a larger share of future successes. Likewise employees with more stock are willing to share some future gains with other employees if their hard work causes that growth. The small shareholders see bigger possible payouts in the future, and the larger shareholders see motivating growth with less risk. I will be arguing against some of the conclusions of current option pricing because I believe that employee ownership offers some better long term growth strategies than current finance theory admits.