The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employee share ownership would have the same impact on the employees from Latvian joint stock companies that underwent privatization in the early 1990s and from the ones without such experience. For the purposes of the analysis the author uses the data from two empirical surveys. The author discovers the current situation in Latvia regarding ESO. The author finds out the opinions regarding share ownership, share purchase, change in employees’ motivation and performance considering employees that have experienced privatization and the ones that have not.