Democratic Organization Research Articles

The Pijao Indians in the Colombian Andes: a legacy for organizational democracy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the organizational and managerial practices of the Pijaos community as a segmentary organization located in the Colombian Andes, providing a cultural legacy through the effective management of power and authority, while establishing a bridge to organizational democracy (OD). Design/methodology/approach A review of books, papers and historiographies was conducted to collect historical data on the Pijaos. Findings It was found that the social organization of the Pijaos was devoid of power ambitions and abuses of authority, thanks to characteristics inherent in their economic system, parenting style, socio-political structure and authority based on rotation of leaders rather than supreme delegation under an inheritance scheme. Originality/value Management literature has not considered the ancestral Amerindian communities of the southern continent to rescue their organizational practices and relate them to the new management trends, as organizational democracy, which not only operates based on flat structures but also considers the rotation of individuals holding positions of power.

The Labor movement and Revolutionary Social Democracy in the borderlands of late Imperial Russia

A review of a new monograph by Professor Eric Blanc of Rutgers University (USA) is presented. The book is devoted to the history of the labor movement and the development of revolutionary social democracy on the outskirts of the Russian Empire from 1882 (the year of the creation of the first social democratic organization in Poland) to the revolutionary 1917. Blanc focuses specifically on the "non-Russian" socialist parties in the territory of modern Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and Armenia. The author concludes that the development of the socialist and labor movement in the border areas of late Imperial Russia was characterized by greater radicalism, a more developed structure and popularity among the local working class. At the same time, the situation in Finland with its autonomy and legalized party struggle, which could include socialists, differed from the virtually illegal life of social democracy in Poland and the Caucasus.

Community climate commons for collective climate action

AbstractMitigating and adapting to climate change is a vital challenge that cannot rely solely on technology or macro policies but need also be tailored to local social and ecological contexts. As theory suggests, institutional designs that increase collective climate action could potentially speed up climate action in society. In this article we explore the concept of ‘community climate commons’ (CCCs) to foster interconnected and holistic approaches involving citizens and civil society in addressing climate change. Based on a systematic literature review, the aim is to further develop the concept of CCCs and to identify key features for the successful establishment of CCCs for the promotion of collective climate action. The results identify four key features for CCCs: (1) democratic organization with transformative leadership, (2) small group sizes with clear boundaries and existing rules‐in‐use for participation, (3) access to organizational structures, meeting places, social capital, collective identity, and social cohesion, and (4) external financial, political, and social support. In conclusion, CCCs have a real potential to foster a wider societal mobilization of collective climate action while simultaneously addressing other issues of concern in local communities.

Is Organizational Democracy Related to Organizational Trust : The Case of Health Institution in Türkiye

Is Organizational Democracy Related to Organizational Trust : The Case of Health Institution in Türkiye

Talking the Talk, or Walking the Walk? How Managerial Practices Relate to Nonprofit Organizations’ Role as Schools of Democracy

Nonprofit organizations are touted as “schools of democracy” that teach civic skills and values, but their increasing use of managerial practices from the business world may endanger this role. We examine the relationships between nonprofits’ managerial practices, practices of organizational democracy, and endorsement of public participation. Using organizational-level survey data from the Viennese metropolitan area, we find that the extent to which nonprofits use managerial practices negatively relates to their degree of organizational democracy. However, greater use of democratic and managerial practices positively relates to endorsing public participation. We conclude that managerialization often turns nonprofits from practitioners into mere preachers of democracy.

Exploring commoning in the anthropocene. Introducing the concept of the election commons as a response to socio-ecological crisis. The case of Skouries, Greece

The Anthropocene epoch challenges our planet’s ecological sustainability and its relationship with democratic processes. The prioritization of economic growth and capital accumulation within most democratic organizations and institutions encourages limitless economic expansion while ignoring or disregarding the earth’s ecological vulnerability in multiple crises (economic, social, ecological). Commoning presents an alternative political strategy to respond to these crises, particularly when it is based on transformative practices of collective care. In this paper, we investigate how an anti-mining community in Skouries, Greece, opposes the imposition of a large-scale mining project by forming a commons initiative. We introduce the concept of election commons, which was designed to allow the anti-mining community to claim institutional power at a local level. This concept is argued to provide valuable insights into how collective care sets the foundations for the renewal of democracy, allowing an alternative relation to the environment and playing a strategic role in connecting different geographical scales of politics. We claim that commoning can enable a more fitting political strategy for the Anthropocene while highlighting the case of decision-making at a national and international level benefiting from local politics.

Offline connections, online votes: The role of offline ties in an online public election

Building democratic communities and fostering inclusive participation is challenging, especially in participatory organisations where governance and sustained contributions are critical. This study explores the dynamics of election participation within the peer-production project Wikipedia, a prime example of an online collaboration model of democratic organisation where democratically elected administrators wield special rights. While previous research on online governance has predominantly focused on online interactions, this study shifts the spotlight to the influence of offline interactions occurring at various gatherings and meetings. Using fixed effects models and large-scale observational data spanning 20 years of offline and online actions, this study finds significant effects of offline meeting participation on users’ voting behaviour. It makes use of novel data sources to emphasise the significance of offline relationships in shaping online (democratic) processes and shows that traditional findings of political science and election research regarding social capital and social networks hold within an online context.

Distributed leadership, self-awareness, democracy, and sustainable development: towards an integrative model of school effectiveness

ABSTRACT This study aimed to examine the effects of school principals' distributed leadership behaviors and teachers’ self-awareness on school effectiveness through the mediating role of democratic practices and attitudes towards sustainable development in schools. Accordingly, an integrative model was created. The study data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping tests. The analysis results confirmed that organizational democracy played a prominent mediating role between school principals’ distributed leadership practices and teachers’ perceptions of school effectiveness. We also found evidence for the effects of school principals’ distributed leadership behaviors and teachers’ self-awareness on school effectiveness through the mediating role of teachers’ attitudes towards sustainable development. We concluded that school principals’ distributed leadership practices could enhance school effectiveness through teachers’ perceptions of organizational democracy and attitudes towards sustainable development in schools. Besides, a high-quality educational environment and school effectiveness could be promoted by increasing teachers’ self-awareness and attitudes towards sustainable development.

Navigating Tensions in Self-Organization and Organizational Democracy. A Qualitative Investigation

Navigating Tensions in Self-Organization and Organizational Democracy. A Qualitative Investigation

Collective Capabilities for Organizational Democracy: The Case of Mutual Social Enterprises

AbstractDemocratic forms of enterprise and economic governance are needed to help address urgent societal challenges where hierarchical decision‐making and governance approaches are clearly failing. There is insufficient understanding, however, of the capabilities needed by enterprises to implement and sustain organizational democracy in pressurized operational contexts. We focus on the role of collective capabilities, which arise from interactions between individuals to create collaboration and collective benefits. Interview evidence from 12 mutual social enterprises – organizations that trade with a social purpose – is used to explore the learning processes that underpin the generation of collective capabilities for organizational democracy. The analysis leads us to a theoretical model of collective capabilities development that responds to three fundamental areas of challenge: (i) Adaptive design of governance structures and processes, to balance ‘bottom‐up’ democracy with ‘top‐down’ stewardship control; (ii) Embedding, extending and revitalizing democracy, by supporting the voice, capabilities and confidence of workers and users to participate in collaborative governance; and (iii) Fostering deliberative learning, to navigate tensions and conflict between plural perspectives and achieve collective aims. In concluding, we reflect on some institutional and cultural barriers to organizational democracy and the case for more concerted policy action to realize its potential as a crucial component of economic democracy.

The key to organizational democracy and corporate sustainability?—The role of employee shareholder associations in German listed companies

AbstractEmployee shareholder associations (ESAs) have emerged as a novel, and widely underestimated actor in the European corporate arena, established to collect and pool the shares and voting power held by a company's employees. As such, they parallel existing institutions for employee representation, potentially empowering employees in their role as shareholders and possibly even providing a counterweight to traditional company owners. Unfortunately, we know little about the actual functioning, the inner workings, and, particularly, the ESAs' contributions to date. To address these shortcomings this paper explores the limitations but also the potential of ESAs in large, German listed companies to contribute to employee share ownership (ESO), to organizational democracy (OD), and to corporate sustainability (CS). Our findings show that, as far as ESOs and OD are concerned, in the specific German context, ESAs usually do not offer alternatives to (or even to compete with) existing employee representation but are instead rather dependent on cooperation with them. Regarding CS, any contribution here is closely linked to the ESAs' own principles and depends on the extent to which the ESA management takes them seriously and prioritizes them over other objectives.

Towards novel blockchain decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) led corporate governance framework

Decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) powered by blockchain technologies has the potential to transform the organisational governance model with the foundations of algorithmic trust and democratic systems. DAO envisages a decentralised democratic organisation using software-based smart contracts to execute autonomous transactions with consensus among stakeholders. The study investigates the prospects of adopting DAO led corporate governance to manage agency (theory) problems in the light of institutional (theory) pressures. The paper depicts how algorithmic trust led corporate governance measures help any organisation follow policies, rules and regulations using DAO led corporate governance (DAOCG) framework. The authors mapped the constituents of agency theory, ethical decision-making, and institutional factors to propose the DAOCG framework. The DAOCG framework is assessed using a thematic analysis of 16 expert interviews with relevant experience from corporate governance and audit domains from varied industries across geographies. The research leveraged MAXQDA software to analyse interview transcripts and opinion codes. The framework helps to identify the core elements of DAO-led corporate governance (DAOCG) and provides the potential to study the theoretically sequenced practical constituents of corporate governance. The first-of-its-kind practical DAOCG framework can be used in the pursuits of digital transformation, business model innovation and social change.

Partners in Forming the People: Jacques Maritain, Saul Alinsky, and the Project of Personalist Democracy

At first glance, Jacques Maritain, the influential Catholic philosopher, and Saul Alinsky, the infamous “dean” of community organizing, could scarcely be more different, in temperament or reputation. Nevertheless, for nearly three decades, these two men were close friends and dedicated collaborators, drawn together by a passionate commitment to democracy. By reading the two alongside each other, this article offers a new interpretation of both. After historically contextualizing the relationship between Maritain and Alinsky, it advances two major claims about their democratic thought. First, it shows that Maritain and Alinsky shared a commitment to a political project best described as “personalist democracy,” insofar as it founded democratic politics upon a specific ethical (and, for Maritain, theological) conception of the human person. Second, the article argues that both thinkers understood personalist democracy to be realizable, in practice, only through a particular kind of democratic organization. They saw the process of organizing as the indispensable means for forming the diffuse persons who comprised society into a coherent “people,” capable of acting for the common good and, in so doing, discovering their own dignity. The article concludes by offering reasons why the project of personalist democracy, as Maritain and Alinsky conceived it, may still have much to offer today.

Trolling the Leviathan: How the use of social media by democratic organizations engenders monsters

The proliferation of trolls may be one of the main reasons why democratic organizations fail to use social media to renew. The literature predominantly assimilates these trolls to psychologically deviant individuals. This article questions this individual-centric approach by suggesting that trolls may well be socially constructed organizational monsters. To investigate this phenomenon, for 2 years, we studied the interactions on a Facebook group between the leaders and members of a trade union. We identified three bi-directional effects at the heart of what we call the monstrification process: discording, disordering, and disgusting effects. The paper contributes to the troll and organizational monster literature by evidencing the four-stage process through which trolls are organizationally constructed as deviant online participants. Our work also adds to the democratic organization literature by metaphorically underlining actors’ emotional and moral distress caused by the dysfunctional encounter of offline and online democracy.

A framework of HRM in cooperatives: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Cooperatives, as democratic organizations owned and controlled by their members, pose distinctive challenges in the realm of human resource management (HRM). These challenges stem from their commitment to serving the diverse interests of multiple stakeholders and the fundamental differentiation between member and non-member employees. In an era where sustainability and a multi-stakeholder perspective have gained prominence in HRM research, cooperatives offer an ideal context for exploring these dynamic developments. Through a comprehensive synthesis of existing literature, this review seeks to construct an HRM framework that is tailored specifically to cooperatives. It highlights how the distinctive characteristics of cooperatives, such as member self-leadership, self-control, and adherence to cooperative values and principles, shape HRM policies and practices. The insights derived from this study provide implications for guiding future research in the domain of HRM within the cooperative sector.

MAPPING OF ORGANIZATIONAL DEMOCRACY: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

Social, economic and political developments in the globalising world have necessitated a re-examination of the concept of democracy. The concept of organisational democracy is a process that expresses the inclusion of individuals in the management processes of organisations and allows freedom of expression in organisations. In this study, it is aimed to reveal at which stage the concept of organisational democracy is included in the international literature. In this context, it is desired to evaluate the development stages of the concept in terms of literature and to set an example for future studies by filling the gaps in the literature. In line with the main purpose, 99 publications related to the concept of “organisational democracy” between 1990 and 2023 in the Scopus database were analysed using R Studio and VOSviewer softwares. The analyses were evaluated by considering the studies conducted in the fields of “Social Sciences”, “Business, Management and Accounting” between 1990 and 2023. The concept of organisational democracy is often associated with concepts such as participation, hierarchy, employee participation organizational culture, organizational commitment and communication. As a result, it has been determined that organisational democracy plays a role in the satisfaction of internal stakeholders.

TÜRKİYE’DE ÖRGÜTSEL DEMOKRASİ ÇALIŞMALARI: LİSANSÜSTÜ TEZLERE YÖNELİK BİR İNCELEME

In this study, it is aimed to examine the postgraduate theses on organisational democracy by content analysis. Forty-one theses from 1993-2023 in the National Thesis Centre of the Council of Higher Education (YOK) were analysed. The most studies in master's theses were conducted in 2022 and in doctoral theses in 2019-2020. It was determined that the most frequently studied variables in master's theses were organisational democracy, democracy, organisation, organisational commitment; in doctoral theses, organisational democracy, democracy, organisational opposition, perception of organisational democracy. It was found that 89,66% of master's theses were quantitative and 6,90% were mixed method; 75% of doctoral theses were quantitative and 25% were mixed method. It is understood that Geçkil and Tikici's (2013) Organisational Democracy and Meyer-Allen's (1993) Organisational Commitment Scales were used to measure organisational democracy in master's theses prepared with quantitative method. In doctoral theses, Geçkil and Tikici (2013)'s Organisational Democracy, Basım and Şeşen (2006)'s Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Kassing (2000)'s Organisational Opposition Scale were used. Master's theses on organisational democracy (n= 15) were prepared in the public sector and doctoral theses (n= 6) were prepared as mixed. While 34,48% of the master's theses were prepared in the Departments of Educational Sciences and Business Administration, 58,33% of the doctoral theses were prepared in the Department of Business Administration. The study is expected to provide new perspectives to researchers by revealing the developments in the field of organisational democracy in Turkey.

The Democratic Organization. Democracy and the Future of Work by Thomas Diefenbach. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 276.

The Democratic Organization. Democracy and the Future of Work by Thomas Diefenbach. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 276.

Organizational democracy at work. Shaping participation through strategic planning in university

This article discusses whether and how strategic planning can promote the development and dissemination of organizational democracy in knowledge-intensive organizations. This research is inspired by the theoretical approach known as strategy-as-practice, in which strategic planning is considered a process of co-construction of meanings and actions involving multiple actors engaged in negotiation dynamics, through situational interactions in daily practice. Adopting a strategic ethnography approach from a methodological point of view, we examine the participatory strategic planning process conducted from January 2022 to April 2023 at the University of Bergamo. By analyzing ethnographic reports, formal documents, and working drafts, four strategic practices (Collective decision making, Platform and process alignment, Emotional coordination, and Organizational diplomacy) are identified as connected to two key enabling factors (synergic approach and consensus on organizational change) that can support and facilitate the spread of work environments more sensitive to the principles of organizational democracy. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

Still in search of organizational democracy: exploring new opportunities and constraints

Still in search of organizational democracy: exploring new opportunities and constraints