It was front-page news when Microsoft announced early in July that it was shutting down its options program and planning instead to award employees shares of stock. To many corporations, especially technology firms, the move smacked of heresy. Options, they say, are the best way to motivate employees and lure top talent. Critics, however, believe options fueled the corporate scandals of the past few years and argue that they actually undermine corporate performance. While neither side seems to be backing off, observers suggest that widely-expected changes in accounting rules may be what finally decides the issue.
Editor’s Note: while a topical article, the basic look of stock grants vs. options is worthwhile to the novice as well as a couple of other topics raised (e.g. dividend tax rate cut).
- An Ounce of Prevention
- Anchoring Employees with the Lure of Stock Options
- Are Stock Option Rescissions an Unfair Benefit?
- Are Stock Options In Your Future?
- Background Report: Employee Stock Options (.pdf)
- Employee Stock Options: Their Use and Policy Implications
- Executive Stock Options Boost Company Performance But Options to Rank-and-File Workers Show Minimal Effect
- Forget Black-Scholes?
- Getting What You Pay for with Stock Options
- Going to Work for a Startup? Let’s Talk Equity
- How Employees Value (Often Incorrectly) Their Stock Options
- Incentive or Gift? How Perception of Employee Stock Options Affects Performance
- Is the Reprice Right? (Part One)
- Is the Reprice Right? (Part Two)
- It’s Not Just How Many, But Who Gets Stock Options That Matters
- J. C. de Swaan and Neil W. C. Harper
- Less Ado about Options
- One Way to Settle the Controversy over Stock Options: Eliminate Them
- Opting for Stock Options
- Out of Options
- Re-examining Stock Options as a Way to Compensate Executives
- Recognize the True Cost of Compensation
- Repricing of Stock Options
- Startup Best Practices 16 – Option Pool Planning
- Startup Stock Options
- Stock Option Repricing: Employees Benefit But What about Investors?
- Stock Options and Long Term IPO Performance
- Stock Options and Related Plans
- Stock-Based Compensation and the Cost of Capital
- Term Sheet – Vesting
- The Danger of Stock Option Grants
- The Technology Entrepreneur’s Guidebook
- Toting Up Stock Options
- Valuing Employee Stock Options: A Comparison of Alternative Models (.pdf)
- What’s a Stock Worth?
- Who Rules Accounting?
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