If you are talking about share buybacks, I think they serve management with stock options exceptionally well.
Sometimes that incentive is aligned with shareholders and people working at the said company, but not always.
It would be interesting to look at new methods of corporate governance for making these type of decisions, that involves the investors and people working in the company more directly.
Dividend and stock buy backs are mostly the same thing - the company returning money to the market, but yeah in the specific case of management stock options they might have different effects.
As for involving workers in the company governance - this is common in Europe, I know that at least in Germany and Norway at some size of the enterprise the workers elect representatives for the board.
Yes, though dividends are taxed differently and usually share price rather than dividend issuance is linked to performance related options/bonuses for management. I think these two things create an artificial preference for share buybacks, and sometimes can influence short term gain seeking (management financial incentives especially are not always aligned with 5-10+ year time span).
I think a board seat for employee representative is one way - I'm interested in broader direct democracy type approaches of corporate governance. Blockchain and DAOs feel like an interesting match for this, since many types of corporate activity - bookkeeping, shares (tokens) and token holder voting can be done on the blockchain. We are exploring this with https://Aragon.one
Sometimes that incentive is aligned with shareholders and people working at the said company, but not always.
It would be interesting to look at new methods of corporate governance for making these type of decisions, that involves the investors and people working in the company more directly.