One of the main components of JBMSM is the "empowerment ESOP ." While the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) was originally invented as a means for providing working people with access to capital credit to become owners of corporate equity, most ESOPs are set up as just another employee benefit plan or tax gimmick, or as an employee share accumulation plan (“ESAP”). Most ESOPs today are not designed to treat worker-owners as first-class shareholders. The “empowerment ESOP,” on the other hand, is designed to encourage workers to assume the responsibilities and risks, as well as the full rights, rewards and powers, of co-ownership.

Furthermore, all academic and government studies to date have concluded that ESOPs alone are not enough to affect individual and corporate performance. Within a JBMSM system, in combination with a regular gainsharing program tied to bottom-line profits, and structured systems of participatory management, the empowerment ESOP stimulates everyone in the company to think and act like entrepreneurs and owners.