Workplace Democracy-the recent debate (original) (raw)
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Workplace Democracy From a Democratic Ideal to a Managerial Tool and Back
In different political theories, democracy is not reduced to state institutions, but includes the democratization of the whole society, its organizations and enterprises. This idea goes back to the beginnings of modern democratic theory and to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. It was adopted by different socialist thinkers, later on by trade unions and, in the 1960s and 70s, by political scientists such as Carole Pateman and other promoters of participatory democracy. According to this tradition, workplace democracy is considered to be necessary for the realization of democratic ideals like individual autonomy, freedom, voice and participation in all relevant questions influencing citizens' lives. Parts of this normative idea were realized by trade union movements and laws, especially in Western European countries. Nevertheless, workplace democracy in the sense of the above-mentioned theories remained far from becoming reality. In the 1990s, the idea was co-opted by organizational development and management studies and underwent a change: Workplace democracy, then mostly operationalized as limited participation, became a managerial tool that should help to increase employees' motivation and efficiency and thereby contribute to entrepreneurial success. In the last few years, however, the original democratic ideal of workplace democracy seems to have been revitalized under conditions of a worldwide economic crisis. This article shows the development and the latest revival of the concept of workplace democracy, and discusses its innovative potential for today's democratic societies.
In Defense of Workplace Democracy: Toward a Justification of the Firm/State Analogy
In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called “investor-owned” companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 70s and 80s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate anew democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: (1) the objection from a difference in ends, (2) the objection from shareholders’ property rights, (3) the objection from worker’s consent, (4) the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, (5) the objection from workers’ (lack of) expertise, and (6) the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms.
The Problem of Workplace Democracy
New Labor Forum, 2017
The link between political and economic democracy was strong following the Civil War, in which one of the central questions was the compatibility of an economic system based on 745037N LFXXX10.
Democracy at work : what , why and how ?
2019
This chapter investigates ‘democracy at work’ in theory and presents some empirical evidence of it in practice in today’s European Union. Beginning with a conceptual discussion of how we can understand the meaning of democracy at work across a range of different approaches, we go on to explore its beneficial impact on civic democracy, economic performance, the reduction of inequalities, sustainability, and job quality. Turning then to existing EU and national-level policies, we assess the current state of play of democracy at work as it is articulated and implemented across a wide range of EU and national policy instruments. We look at some concrete outcomes, such as the instruments put in place for the protection of occupational health and safety. We critically address shortcomings of the proposed Company Law Package regarding workers’ participation in corporate governance. We identify unequal access to democracy at the local workplace level and assess the state of play of gender e...
The Republican Case for Workplace Democracy (Social Theory & Practice, 2014)
The republican case for workplace democracy (WD) is presented and defended from two alternative means of ensuring freedom from arbitrary interference in the firmnamely, (a) the right to freely exit the firm and (b) workplace regulation. This paper shows, respectively, that costless exit is neither possible nor desirable in either perfect or imperfect labor markets, and that managerial discretion is both desirable and inevitable due to the incompleteness of employment contracts and labor legislation. The paper then shows that WD is necessary, from a republican standpoint, if workers' interests are to be adequately tracked in the exercise of managerial authority. Three important objections are finally addressed-(i) that WD is redundant, (ii) that it is unnecessary provided that litigation and unionism can produce similar outcomes, and (iii) that it falls short of ensuring republican freedom compared to self-employment.
Firms as coalitions of democratic cultures: towards an organizational theory of workplace democracy
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2022
The theory of the firm initially developed by Ronald Coase has made explicit the political nature of firms by putting hierarchy at the heart of the economic process. Theories of workplace democracy articulate this intuition in the normative terms of the conditions under which this political power can be legitimate. This paper presents an organizational theory of workplace democracy, and contends that the democratization of firms requires that we take their organizational dimension explicitly into account. It thus construes democracy as an organizational principle and juxtaposes it to market, hierarchy, and norm-compliance as rival principles for the organization of economic activities. Attempts to construe democracy as an organizational principle with unique features in the tradition of transaction-cost economics are discussed before proposing an innovative solution based on an updated version of grid/group cultural theory of politics, adjusted to accommodate the basic requirements of democratic theory.