Isn't the problem of adapting to change universal across all companies - and the key success factor there is leadership - rather than the structure of ownership?

Perhaps capital owned companies have the distance to be a bit more ruthless in driving change - however while that may mean you get better short term allocation of capital, it doesn't take into account the other costs.

Everytime a company lays off workers it relies on the state to ensure that those people and their dependents don't starve, potentially retrained and available to be successfully deployed elsewhere. Or to stop them, in their desperation, to gain the materials to live, start breaking the law.

ie there is an element of free-riding of private capital on the State to ensure a stable society that private enterprise existence relies on, while they employ 'creative destruction'.

Good companies - whether employee owned or not, don't free-load, they invest in their own staff through training, they pay good redundancy etc.

You could argue the above is more likely in employee owned companies.

However as I said at the start, in the end it's the leadership that matters.