> it wouldn't affect incentives much.
Speculation based on a shortage of info and, I assume (speculation), a feeling that at least some workers would rather do a different job, which would, from my POV (speculation) fit with
> Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order; at the same time, maybe he wants to know how much he takes home every day.
Yes, your barista is increasing the stock price by doing his job well because customers will return for the enjoyable process and outcome. Given the positive feedback and proper operation procedures in quality assurance, workplace development and operations improvement your barista will also "design" & submit ideas to improve/change/expand certain things which can benefit process and outcome for the customers. Your barista is only one link in the supply chain to customer and daily income, which means that every decision will run through a feedback loop that creates the evolution of the company.
But that's rarely the main driver of stock prices, which are currently mostly artificial constructs based on shareholder bullshit, networked manipulation and whale circle jerks. If a company "does bad", though, these main influences are dropped and increases are reversed until company behavior serves the kinks of the shareholders financial orgy again. "Imagine" a company creating free value that can not be monetized by whales but only by the rest of the world. "Free" energy, for example, a perfectly adaptable mix of energy sources maintained by sustainable procedures the negative side effects of which are compensated by gracefully handling resulting trash, upcycling or, out of imminent necessity, the creation of industries that R&D adequate solutions. All of this happens but always based on game theory methods, and that happens only, exclusively, because leadership falsely believes they are compensating their workers based on market evaluations of their work, which, entirely ignore that consumer prices are inflated by whale circle jerk behavior. It's pathetic and deserves nothing but disrespect. But people in circle jerks are manic and obsessed.
Stocks, in their current form and with the current laws, are bullshit and serve a future world where AI will do most jobs and people in companies will only exist so that people higher up in the chain will feel pseudo-dominant, which is already the case, but too many journalists and politicians are part of the circle jerks and thus manic and obsessed as well.
> (a) they find it hard to raise capital
Because circle jerks. There's not even a game theoretical argument to justify this behavior as the giving those companies capital will either increase market and profits directly or by ways of added value as in "learning lessons" and "process of elimination".
The reason it's done anyway because the circle jerks base their decision on fear of the evolution of the game so they'd rather keep the game as it is, balancing their decisions which requires totalitarianism, dictatorship.
> (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake.
Speculation/misinterpretation. They would sack underperforming divisions if they had to, but there rarely are cases where such divisions can't be improved and made more useful or cases where underperformance has exclusively negative outcomes. Again, the problem is whale circle jerk thinking. Underperformance is a matter of the right metrics, which do not serve the shareholders but company and consumer (the _correct_ metrics, that is). Now, when it comes to expanding while diluting the workers stake, you have the same problem, because the base income won't change. Only the stock increase will, which comes on top of the base revenue and makes everybody rich. But even in the rare cases where everybody does make less money, it's always temporary and sometimes necessary. This is not closed system after all.