Decades ago, he said, “the people who produced or sold the product were more central than the people in the corporate suite. There was a different mind-set and it’s linked to the larger issue of income inequality.”

Not only was Sears’s program generous, it was also remarkably egalitarian. Contributions were based on years of service, not rank, and the longest-serving workers received nearly $3 for every dollar they contributed. The company phased out the profit-sharing plan beginning in the 1970s. This month, after years of lackluster attempts at revival, the retailer filed for bankruptcy protection.

Sears was hardly alone in corporate America, said Prof. Joseph R. Blasi, who directs Rutgers’s Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing.

Companies like Procter & Gamble, S.C. Johnson, Hallmark Cards and U.S. Steel all embraced profit-sharing and were part of a corporate movement to encourage the practice, he said.

Among some leading executives in the early to mid-20th century, Professor Blasi said, “there was a notion that wages were not enough and workers had a right to share in the fruits of their labor.”

In the executive suite, however, profit-sharing still flourishes. While 68 percent of workers who earn more than $75,000 benefit from it, only 20 percent of workers earning less than $30,000 do, according to Professor Blasi. The decline of profit-sharing for the latter group has accelerated in recent years, with the median annual grant falling to $300 in 2014 from $921 in 2002.