To the extent that we extend ownership claims to these affected constituencies, they can use their control rights to force more accountability for such costs. Without the ownership claims, the workers would not have trusted managers enough to make the concessions in pay and work practices necessary to restructure. Ownership rights gave them some assurance that managers would not take opportunistic advantage of their concessions. Nevertheless, there are limits to the generalization of such approaches. For one thing, increased control in any particular enterprise comes at the expense of decreased diversification and hence increased risk.
Workers already have a lot of human capital tied up in their workplaces.
If they take major financial stakes, they increase their exposure. To be sure, they reduce certain risks, such as managerial opportunism. But they become more exposed to risks outside the enterprise. A general downturn in the industry could wipe out their investment. Diversified investors are much less exposed to such risk.