Profit Sharing and Income Risk: A Survey

The predominant method by which workers in a business organization get compensated for their labour is that they earn a wage which has been guaranteed to them through an employment contract. By contrast, the earnings of the company (the firm, the owner) remains risky, since they earn the residual after making all the contractual payments to the different factors of production. The residual is a random variable because of production and market uncertainty, and the firm absorbs this risk while insuring the income risk of the workers. A modification of this payment scheme occurs when the earnings of the workers are made contingent upon either their productivity, or the profit of the company. A prominent example is the piece‐rate payment system in which the earnings of a labourer are directly related to the amount of output he or she produces. Profit sharing is another example of variable wage; in this system the workers are paid a share of the firm's profit.