Workplace Democracy Research Articles

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Theocrines was a well-known sycophant who often brought false charges against his fellow citizens in the hope of profiting financially. This is what Epichares asserts in his oration Against Theocrines, delivered ca. 343-338 BCE, in order to avenge his father. Theocrines had earlier charged and successfully prosecuted Epichares' father for proposing an illegal decree. This led Epichares to bring a denunciation against Theocrines, claiming that his adversary had violated numerous laws on several occasions. Apart from this speech, two epigraphic testimonies also provide biographical details about Theocrines. These inscriptions suggest that, following his trial, he took on public offices as a public arbitrator and councillor. This article aims to combine these different aspects of Theocrines' life and challenge the negative and stereotypical depiction of him as a notorious sycophant. This portrayal has been predominant in modern studies primarily because they heavily rely on Epichares's speech alone. Hence, the critical question arises whether this speech delivered by a vindictive Epichares can be taken literally to draw reliable conclusions about the reprehensible practices attributed to Theocrines. Characterizing Theocrines solely as a sycophant is debatable and only represents one facet of his public life. Thus, by examining these varied sources, we can develop certain hypotheses about Theocrines' character, the substance of Epichares' claims, and the workings of Athenian democracy.

United We Stand? External Obstacles, Internal Tensions and Degenerative Trends in a Greek Media Cooperative

ABSTRACT Drawing on qualitative analysis through semi-structured interviews this study focuses on Greece’s most longstanding media cooperative documenting the challenges it has encountered during the past decade while operating in a highly disrupted and competitive media environment. Building on the degeneration and regeneration theses, which distinguish between cooperatives that either degenerate into capitalist businesses or rejuvenate their democratic values through hard work, this study explores the way this outlet navigated the obstacles it faced. The findings provide empirical evidence that upholding and revitalizing workplace democracy within a fiercely contested media ecosystem compounded by a decade-long economic crisis, is a constant struggle. What keeps journalists of this specific outlet investing in the cooperative model is a unique sense of professional freedom and personal growth that they experience as members of a worker owned outlet. These gains, intangible in nature yet extremely valuable, are instrumental in helping journalists overcome external challenges, reconcile internal tensions and keep the endeavor going. These insights highlight the dynamics of this specific cooperative and may not be universally applicable to all journalistic cooperatives. However, they provide valuable lessons for other worker-owned media operating in similar contexts. They also highlight emerging trends and suggest avenues for future research.

Party system ideological polarization in Western Europe: data, trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties (1945–2021)

ABSTRACT Unlike other key party system properties (e.g. fragmentation, volatility), polarization lacks a publicly available cross-national and longitudinal dataset that can be used as an established source among the scientific community. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing a novel publicly available dataset of party system ideological polarization in Western European party systems. The dataset relies on multiple expert surveys and provides measures of party system ideological polarization for each parliamentary election and legislature in 20 Western European countries since 1945. The article also presents party system polarization’s comparative longitudinal trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties. It finds that party system ideological polarization is on the rise in Western Europe, mainly due to a progressive shift in the electoral support from ideologically moderate mainstream parties to more extreme challenger parties. Moreover, in recent years, high party system polarization has recurred in highly fragmented and volatile contexts, thus creating a detrimental context for the working of democracy.

Augmenting surveys with social media discourse on the workings of democracy from a cross-national perspective

This paper introduces an unsupervised framework that illustrates how insights gathered from opinion surveys regarding the functionality of democracy can be connected to social media messages of politicians on an international scale. By concentrating on the influence of social media messages from elected officials, the study adopts a “top-down” theoretical approach that links citizens’ attitudes towards democracy with the viewpoints about democracy expressed by politicians within social media discourses. Using a word embedding classification strategy, democracy-related themes are extracted from politicians’ messages. The research is conducted across 11 European countries, namely, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Switzerland is also included in the study because of its direct democracy system. The 10th round of the European Social Survey serves as the basis for assessing citizens’ democratic attitudes. The study encompasses two main analytical segments. First, aggregated analyses conducted at the country level reveal the degree of alignment between prominent democracy-related themes present in politicians’ discourse and citizens’ perceived significance of these same themes. Second, individual-level connections between social media data and survey respondents are established through their preferred political party (or orientation). Variable importance analysis is subsequently applied to explore which democracy-related themes conveyed by politicians hold significance in predicting public contentment with democracy.

Against the extremes: Simmel’s social and economic pluralism

ABSTRACT We live in times of increasing polarization in which the margins of the political spectrum begin to dominate our social imagination again. While the neoliberal iteration of the capitalist project suggests extreme individualism as the normative default position, the devastating impact of the globalized economy on many has reignited the pursuit of socialist alternatives. In this constellation, Simmel's social theory of modernity can be a useful resource to undercut the return of the old battle between opposite economic systems. This paper argues that two kinds of pluralism can be derived from his conceptualization of the social effects of the money economy. In contrast to one-size-fits-all concepts of freedom, Simmel embraces a social pluralism which acknowledges a plurality of cultural spheres as relevant for the self-actualization of modern individuals, attributing different combinations of independence and embeddedness to them. Moreover, he rejects the social extremes of socialism and individualism since they fail to properly integrate individual freedom into the social whole without undermining it. Instead, Simmel gives us the vision of a pluralist economy in which democratic worker's cooperatives are combined with an overall liberal market to satisfy both the longing for community and the endeavour for individual distinction.

Workplace Democracy as the Liberal Republican Default

Liberal republican justice requires adequate, reasonably equal protection against domination while giving everybody a reasonably equal opportunity to live their lives as they see fit. This article investigates which central policy follows from it for workplace non-domination, under realistic assumptions about the nature of our working lives and some structural characteristics of advanced economies (especially the presence of large firms). It argues for a legal default of workplace democracy, understood as any arrangement that gives workers equal individual control rights over the management of their firm, and, as a body, more control rights than any other groups of enfranchised stakeholders, taken together. The argument has two steps. The first demonstrates where the most promising alternative liberal strategy – that of enhancing all individuals’ power to exit from their job through granting unconditional resources – fails. The second shows how this failure leads to the specific conception of default workplace democracy outlined.

Crafting alternative work organisations: Paradoxes of workplace democracy and emancipation in worker-buyout cooperatives

Drawing on an interpretative study primarily based on two waves of interviews, the authors traced two cooperativisation experiences over 10 years from an actor-centred approach. The shift to worker ownership did not automatically lead to workplace democratisation and workers’ emancipation. Indeed, the early development of the cooperativisation experiences was marked by internal conflict and worker-owners’ dissatisfaction. Over time, a paradoxical alternative workplace was consolidated, in which worker-owners’ emancipation was ultimately sustained through the exploitation of non-member employees. The study makes a twofold contribution to the cooperativisation literature. First, it moves beyond utopian or sceptical perspectives to provide a more nuanced view of worker-buyout co-ops, emphasising the paradoxical nature of their emancipatory potential. Second, the study’s longitudinal analysis of co-ops formed out of financially sound firms, rather than bankrupted ones, advances knowledge of the diversity of cooperativisation experiences and the mechanisms that contribute to the longevity and sustainability of worker-buyout co-ops.

Automation and Workplace Democracy: Autonomy, Recognition, and Meaningful Work

Building on the philosophical literature on the importance of workplace democracy, the article proposes a tripartite framework to conceptualise an ethically desirable course of automation. Three groups of argument are invoked: arguments from autonomy, interpersonal recognition, and meaningful work. These three groups of arguments are applied to analyse automation: whether automation extends or limits workers’ autonomy, interpersonal recognition, and meaningfulness of work. The last section of the article illustrates the tripartite framework with contemporary literature on automation and technological change.

Do Androids Dream of Bad TV?: Un/originality in Neil Burger’s Voyagers

Critics did not take kindly to Neil Burger’s Voyager (2021). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a dismal 25%, and the consensus is that it’s a trip best not taken: “It has a game cast and a premise ripe with potential, but Voyagers drifts in familiar orbit rather than fully exploring its intriguing themes.” This article seeks neither to reclaim the film as an unjustly neglected cinematic masterpiece nor to assert its importance in the canon of dystopian works. Rather, it treats Voyagers as a test case for exploring our own critical investment in the genre. Our aims are twofold. First, we argue that the film speaks to the dystopian genre’s fundamental distrust of future generations to make the best decisions. It effectively exposes the central irony that we presume to know best though we had signally failed to do right by our planet in the first place. Secondly, we reveal how unoriginal work can still point to new ways forward. By the end of the film, the Humanitas mission is back on course, following Zac’s (Fionn Whitehead) demise. Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) is surely right to wonder, to Christopher (Tye Sheridan), how they should ensure that mutiny doesn’t recur. The short answer? They can’t—and they probably shouldn’t. The capacity for events, like those we witness in Voyagers, to recur—and many times over too—is at least partially responsible for the dystopian genre’s appeal and it contributes to the genre’s persistent ethical ruminations. This essay advances scholarship by suggesting that even the most derivative of cinema can offer profound insights into our world, in this case, how democracies work.

The Moderating Role of leader humility in the Relationship Between workplace Democracy and employees Voice :An Empirical Study

The Moderating Role of leader humility in the Relationship Between workplace Democracy and employees Voice :An Empirical Study

The political spillover of workplace democratization: How democratic efficacy at the workplace contributes to countering right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany

The political spillover of workplace democratization: How democratic efficacy at the workplace contributes to countering right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany

The Epistemology of Corporate Power: The Limits of the Firm–State Analogy

ABSTRACTPolitical theorists frequently utilize the ‘firm–state analogy’ (FSA) to support the arguments for democratic governance in firms. This article presents the FSA as an analogy with both justificatory and epistemic functions. Its justificatory function provides valid justificatory strategies for workplace democracy, while its epistemic function offers models that shape the understanding of corporate power. In this article, four limitations of the justificatory function of the FSA are identified: (i) the problem of ambiguity, (ii) the boundary problem, (iii) the issue of normative redundancy, and (iv) the universality problem. Furthermore, the article argues that the epistemic function of the FSA fails to adequately address some of the most concerning forms of corporate power wielded by large, particularly multinational, corporations in the realm of international trade. As a result, the FSA misses crucial reasons for the normative desirability of democracy in corporate governance.

Political realignment in Western Europe in the twenty-first century: eroding satisfaction and trust in democracy and its institutions?

ABSTRACT European democracies appear to be facing substantial difficulties. Challenges arise from the emergence of right-wing populist parties and the withdrawal of citizens from established political parties. These changes it is claimed have led to an erosion of trust in the democratic political system. Drawing on ten waves of the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2020 in 11 Western European countries we test the evidence for a decline in democratic sentiment. Results do not support any deterioration in satisfaction with the way democracy works and trust in parliament, legal and police systems. Nor have hostile attitudes to immigrants increased in this period. Given the general rise in the electoral support for these parties our findings appear puzzling. However, while the evidence indicates no deterioration, attitudes to political parties and parliaments were far from positive in 2002 providing fertile ground for the emergence of populist radical right-wing parties.

Governing for the Common Good: The Possibilities of Sociocracy in Nonprofit Organizations

AbstractWithin nonprofit organizational studies, there has been a long-standing interest in democratic governance as ways of building political participation, civic skills and fostering inclusion. While established approaches to democratic governance have many benefits, existing research points to numerous challenges, including apathy and oligarchization. This paper explores an alternative form of democratic governance, sociocracy. Sociocracy, sometimes called dynamic governance, is organized around four key elements: circular hierarchy, consent-based decision-making, double linking, and practices to foster inclusivity and voice, a unique blend which distinguishes it from other forms of democratic governance. This article explores the implications on workplace democracy that a nonprofit organization experienced when limiting it. We find that sociocracy offers many benefits, including empowering members and reducing the risk of domination, and also highlights the many challenges that can accompany the implementation of sociocracy, particularly how four forms of inequality contribute to those challenges.

When Workers Want to Say No: A View into Critical Consciousness and Workplace Democracy in Data Work

In this paper, we describe and reflect upon the development of critical consciousness and workplace democracy within an experimental workplace called DataWorks. Through DataWorks, we hire adults from communities historically minoritized in computing education and data careers, and train them in entry-level data skills developed through work on client projects. In this process, workers gain a range of skills. Some of these skills are technical, such as programming for data analysis; some are managerial, such as scoping and bidding projects; others are social, perhaps even political, such as the ability to say "No" to projects. In what follows, we describe a workshop series developed to build the workers' critical literacy and consciousness about their data work, specifically regarding the use of data in machine learning systems. After that, we describe a data project the workers questioned and resisted because they determined the work to be harmful. In that process, they demonstrated and enacted a critical consciousness towards data and machine learning. Reflecting on this enactment of data-focused critical consciousness, we identify themes that characterize a democratic workplace, describe the work of designing for organizational action and institutional relations, and discuss how worker and researcher positionality affects this work. In doing so, we argue for enabling workers to resist and refuse harmful data work and challenge the standard power structures of academic research and data work.

"We are no Luddites!" - CSCW, Co-Determination and Digital Transformation in Germany

HCI and CSCW have a long-standing interest in the consequences of digital transformation for work practices. A key part of this is its impact on labour relations. While prior HCI studies have examined labour relations in domains such as platform work, few have looked at industrial settings. This paper presents an ethnographic study of works councils in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Germany. Works councils exemplify the principle of Co-Determination, which is the right of employees to participate in the design and management of their workplace and play a vital role in vetting new technologies whenever they imply changes in work practices. A number of issues confront works councils when they attempt to accomplish this, namely a lack of time, knowledge, and external support. We discuss these issues and consider their implications for both design and the constitution of workplace democracy in future industrial settings.

The Demos of the democratic firm

Despite growing interest in workplace democracy, the question whether nonworker stakeholders, like suppliers and local communities, warrant inclusion in the governance of democratic companies, as workers do, has been largely neglected. We inspect this question by leaning on the boundary problem in democratic theory. We first argue that the question of who warrants inclusion in democratic workplaces is best addressed by examining why workplace democracy is warranted in the first place, and offer a twofold normative benchmark—addressing objectionable corporate power and upholding efficiency—to assess the principles of democratic inclusion on offer. Against this benchmark, we next argue that the All-Affected Principle is unfit due to its over- and underinclusive extensional results, and that the All-Subjected Principle, whose variants we examine alongside their extensional results, holds more promise when coupled with independent considerations of justice or a constrained variant of the All-Affected Principle. These combinations need not entirely preclude, but speak against, nonworker stakeholder inclusion.

Translators in the platform economy: a decent work perspective

ABSTRACT In the wake of the platform economy’s transformative influence on translation work, this study aims to address a critical concern: the alignment of translation workers’ labour conditions with the principles of decent work. Through a quantitative analysis of a subset of questionnaire data collected from translators in Turkey engaging with various digital labour platforms, the findings suggest substantial disparities in meeting the six fundamental conditions of decent work, as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO). These include insufficient earnings, excessive and asocial working hours, difficulties in achieving work-life balance, absence of a safe and healthy work environment, limited social security access, and a deficiency in social dialogue, representation, and workplace democracy. The identified issues align with the findings of prior studies, which warn that the techno-political developments in the translation industry, coupled with the dominance of capitalist business structures, may introduce new challenges and constraints to translation work and its workers, ultimately leading to exploitative and unsustainable working conditions.

Rally and Rage: The Gap between Specific and Pandemic-Specific Support for Governments in Europe

In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public generally expressed high pandemic-specific support for their governments. Analysis based on ESS Round 10 COVID-19 module data from 20 countries shows, however, that there was a gap between pandemic-specific and specific support for governments in European states. A positive gap in favor of pandemic-specific support for governments was found among 52.7% of the respondents, while a negative trend was observed among 24.0% of the respondents. Younger people, those self-employed or working for family businesses, students, those with better subjective health, and people who tested positive for or thought they had suffered from COVID-19 expressed less satisfaction with the government’s handling of COVID-19 in their country compared to general satisfaction with national government performance. Political opinions affected the support gap too; people who were satisfied with the way democracy works, were less trusting of their government’s ability to control the spread of the pathogen, preferred their own decisions over compliance with government restrictions, and perceived that their government failed to manage the health–economy trade-off restrained their pandemic-specific support for the government as well.

Human-centered AI through employee participation.

This article examines the role of employee participation in AI implementation, focusing on a case study from the German telecommunications sector. Theoretical discussions highlight concepts of employee participation and workplace democracy, emphasizing the normative basis for human-centered AI in Europe. The empirical analysis of the case study demonstrates social practices of human-centered AI and the importance of employee representatives and labor policies in sustainable technology. The contribution is structured into two main parts: first, discussing sociological concepts of employee participation and summarizing the role of works councils in shaping digital technology implementation. Second, focusing on a case study of AI regulations at Deutsche Telekom, highlighting the significant effects of employee participation and co-determination by the group works council in promoting socially sustainable AI implementation which is done via qualitative case analysis. The article highlights the significance of participation and negotiations and gives an example for social partnership relations in AI implementations.