Workplace Democracy Research Articles

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.

Dialogue in the Social Media Age

Abstract The anti-dialogical nature of social media has exacerbated social divides while widening the gap between policy decisions and their lived implications. Effective interpersonal relationships – both a conduit and requisite of democracy – are arguably grounded in dialogue. As envisaged by Martin Buber, dialogue necessitates holding space for other subjectivities, constituting a humanistic approach to building trust and community. To build a healthy democracy, we thus need to reconceptualise the practical connections between dialogue, collaborative participation and public engagement. To this end, this article puts forth a two-pronged approach to the contribution of dialogue: by fostering presence while unsilencing marginalised voices. Specifically, we will explore the potential applications of Buberian dialogue within the practice of Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD). As a methodology that both requires and facilitates trust-building absent in social media mechanisms, SDD promises a path towards greater inclusiveness and commitment core to the workings of deliberative democracy.

Beyond workplace democracy: Prefiguring non-capitalist social reproduction within Marx's communist horizon

This contribution argues that, in order to foster a more socially just and sustainable economy and society, management and organization studies need to embrace novel, alternative forms of organizing the economy and society. We first discuss how the scholarship on workplace democracy, which promotes more participatory governance in firms and cooperatives, fails to acknowledge that exploitation and dispossession are constitutive features of capitalist institutions. As these institutions need to abide by the imperative of capital accumulation, they cannot be redeemed. Instead, we propose that our social reproduction should be organized through alternative non-capitalist economic practices. We point to the key role of prefiguration in envisioning alternatives to capitalism, and plead for embedding prefiguration within a ‘communist horizon' based on the Marxist principle ‘from each according to their possibilities to each according to their needs'. We conclude with a call for bringing alternative economies to the core of management and organization studies, in view of expanding our current understanding of the economy beyond capitalism, as a means to sustain life on this planet rather than for capital accumulation.

Does the Equal Opportunities Committee make democracy work (better) in academia?

The democratization of organizations is studied in this article with reference to the university system. In recent years, Italian universities have followed the European trend in redesigning themselves as organizations attentive to performance, excellence, and achievement. This has resulted in the enhancement of mechanisms of ‘adverse selection' for women, both in career advancement and in access to decision-making positions. But compared to other European countries, Italian universities have lagged behind in policies to promote gender equality. However, they have for some time been endowed with bodies, the Equal Opportunities Committees (Comitati Unici di Garanzia, CUGs), established in order to reduce discrimination and to promote greater participation in the academic organization. The functioning of the CUGs, which varies greatly at local level, is linked to the possibility of benefiting from resources of various kinds. Research shows that the resources that central governance makes available to a CUG are important. So too are the relational networks in which the members of the CUG are involved and which increase their visibility, legitimacy, and motivation. The interaction between top-down and bottom-up resources furnishes an analytical framework useful for interpreting the variable effectiveness of the CUGs in the democratic quality of Italian universities. It also helps to conduct more detailed specification of some theoretical dimensions already brought to the attention of scholars in the perspective known as ‘fixing the organizations'.

Workplace democracy: The argument from the worker–society relation

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Disgruntled Italians – social capital and civic culture in Italy

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to analyse the geography of social capital in Italy thirty years after publication of the book Making Democracy Work – Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Putnam etal. 1993). We used a statistical method (Distance Between Strata [D.B.S.]), which had not previously been applied to the study of social capital, and data from the 2019 I.S.T.A.T. Multiscope Household Surveys ‘Aspects of daily life’. We analysed the distribution of social capital in the regions of Italy in multidimensional terms. With D.B.S. it was indeed possible to consider various dimensions of social capital instead of using an overall index. It enabled us to isolate three types of Italians, which we called civic, non-civic and ‘disgruntled’ Italians. Disgruntled Italians are citizens who participate in political and social life and tend to trust others, but have little trust in public institutions. Their geographic identification is the main contribution of this article to Italian studies on social capital for at least two reasons: (1) it questions the ‘obvious’ correlation between political participation and trust in institutions; (2) it provides an important basis for reflection on Italian civic culture.

The Transformative Potential of Platform Cooperativism: The Case of CoopCycle

The paper sets out to dissolve a contrast between traditional coop sectoral enclosure, on the one hand, and platform coop diversity, on the other hand, which often resonates with precariousness, marginalisation, fragmentation, whitewashing and corporatisation. To tackle traditional and platform coop discordance, the paper draws on the model of open cooperativism introduced by Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens, passed through the lens of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory of hegemony, to weave a narrative that seeks to unite and broaden the scope of the cooperative sector. In doing so, the paper reviews CoopCycle as an illustrative case study of platform cooperativism. CoopCycle is a global federation of bike delivery coops that deploy the digital commons to install workplace democracy in the bike delivery sector. The paper aims at contributing to the understanding of platform cooperativism, all the while embedding the model of platform cooperativism into the counter-hegemony of open cooperativism aiming to challenge the current hegemony of neoliberalism. The main argument here is that the model of open cooperativism bears comparative advantages vis-à-vis closed proprietary socio-economic models.

Populism and social capital in structurally disadvantaged regions and the 2023 Czech presidential election: making democracy work again?

ABSTRACT The 2023 presidential runoff election in the Czech Republic showed that populist candidate Andrej Babiš enjoyed support in regions designated as structurally disadvantaged. These regions are affected by multiple problems, particularly in the social, economic, and educational spheres. The present study uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to determine the reasons for populist support in these regions and whether all of them show similar combinations of conditions. In particular, the study works with conditions related to social capital and phenomena such as civil society. We find that the victory of Andrej Babiš occurred in regions exhibiting identical combinations of conditions (problems) facilitating support for populist candidates.

Necessary conjunctions: Hawkspur Camp and the transdisciplinary roots of therapeutic community

PurposeThis paper aims to tell something of the story of the “Hawkspur Experiment” (1936–1941), a therapeutic camp organised early in the modern history of therapeutic community as an intervention into the lives of young men who were viewed to be at risk of delinquency (Wills, 1967). Although it was to have a remarkable influence on group and therapeutic community practice and theory, the authors argue that its influence is not as well-remembered nor incorporated into contemporary therapeutic understanding and discussion as it should be.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a historical reflection based on systematic examination of the clinical and administrative records of Hawkspur Camp for men, and supporting documents held in the Planned Environment Therapy Archive. In addition, the authors use published primary and secondary sources.FindingsHawkspur Camp was a cross-disciplinary enterprise which brought together psychoanalytic thinking, social work, an interest in groups, political activism, a concern with the dynamics and working of democracy and the application of emergent social science methods. It was overtly an intervention into the criminal justice system but was also an intentional exploration of the therapeutic benefits of community living and of a “pioneering” lifestyle; a rigorous experiment in how psychoanalytic ideas might be used in group residential settings; and a politically grounded exploration of participative democracy as a fundamental therapeutic principle.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the first findings from a systematic study of the records of Hawkspur Camp.

The Nordic Model and Management in International Corporations:A Scoping Review

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The overall aim of this scoping review is to present empirical studies regarding how the Nordic model has been investigated in relation to management in international companies. The subse quent objective is to discuss the model’s robustness regarding internationalization. The question raised is how the Nordic model, in relation to management, is configured in empirical studies undertaken in international corporations. Using systematic literature searches to examine peer- reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2022, 15 out of 972 studies were eligible for a full review. Primarily, one facet of the model was investigated: workplace democracy. Foreign-owned companies operating in Nordic countries partly adopted the model, whereas the model was implemented to some extent in Nordic-owned companies abroad. Management’s support and employee involvement were considered important. This review indicates that there is pressure on the model, although it has extended beyond the Nordic border and appears to be adaptable to global working life.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

A cruise-and-crash model of the cost of ruling

ABSTRACT Since the publication of Nannestad and Paldam ([1999]. “The Cost of Ruling. A Foundation Stone for Two Theories,” University of Aarhus, Denmark. Working Paper No. 1999-9. http://www.martin.paldam.dk/Papers/Gamle/Cost-of-ruling.PDF.) on the cost of ruling, their finding that incumbents lose votes in the order of 2 to 3 percentage points per term has gained the status of something like an “inductive law” of politics (Budge [2019]. Politics. A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works. Abingdon/Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2019). We suggest that this generalization conjures up an inaccurate image, that of a gradual reduction of a ruling party’s vote over the course of an incumbency or “spell.” Our own analyses of national and state or provincial elections in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States demonstrate that this interpretation is not correct. Instead, while they remain in office the ruling party cruises along, averaging more or less the same share of the vote election after election, until they fail to win another term, at which point all or nearly all of the cost of ruling, like a balloon payment on a loan, comes due. Moreover, on average the magnitude of the loss is independent of the length of their stay in office. This means that a long incumbency confounds the expectations fostered by the “inductive law” because the overall loss – which we find to be reasonably constant across a wide spectrum of data sets – divided by a spell length exponentially distributed from one to many terms cannot be a constant. Nannestad and Paldam's assertion of 2.25 percentage points per term vote loss is at best a description of a mid-range value.

Only losers use excuses? Exploring the association between the winner-loser gap and referendum attitudes following a local referendum

ABSTRACT Consultative referendums are becoming more widely used as a way of responding to rising public discontent with the workings of representative democracy. Consequently, consultative referendums have become an integral part of democratic decision-making processes across the world. However, how the population reacts to the referendum outcome is expected to differ among the population as referendums, by design, divides the participants into winners and losers. In turn, creating a winner-loser gap with potentially polarizing societal consequences. This study therefore seeks to explore how this winner-loser gap is associated with several types of referendum attitudes following the outcome of a local referendum. Using survey data (N = 3113) gathered after a high stakes local referendum in Finland, the more explicit research purpose is therefore to analyze how individual-level opinions about referendums, turnout thresholds and margin of victory thresholds are related to the winner-loser gap. Additionally, we also control for whether these associations are moderated by external efficacy and political trust. The results clearly imply that the winner-loser gap have consequences for several types of referendum attitudes, contributing to scholarship about the effects derived from the winner-loser gap.

Silicon law of oligarchy: patterns of member participation in the decision-making of platform cooperatives

Platform cooperatives that are owned and governed by gig workers themselves have been proposed as a silver bullet to improve these workers’ influence on organizational decision-making. However, they remain relatively rare compared with dominant investor-owned platforms. Traditionally, worker cooperatives strive for alternative organizing based on the ideal of workplace democracy but are often faced with unequal participation by members in decision-making processes. To test for participation inequalities, this study used survey data (n = 418) from a network of four platform worker cooperatives in Italy. The results show that members with lower affective commitment towards their cooperative and less social capital among other members are less likely to participate, but that there is no effect of cooperative size and human capital.

Employee voice at board level: Responses to the revised UK Corporate Governance Code and the prospects for workplace democracy

This article presents empirical findings on listed company responses to provisions on board-level workforce engagement in the revised 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code, based on analysis of FTSE 350 company reports, survey data from 70 firms, and a series of 41 interviews with directors, senior managers and workforce representatives across 17 case study firms. The findings suggest that, despite some pockets of good practice, the current code-based regulatory framework is weak and ineffective. In light of this, the article considers current debates around strengthening worker voice in governance structures – including through appeals to corporate purpose, investor engagement, and wider changes in the legal and regulatory architecture. It concludes that any fundamental reform would require a recasting of the narrative around corporate purpose, based on a pluralist recognition of the dual nature of labour/capital investments in the firm and a renewed emphasis on the principle of workplace democracy.

Workplace democracy in action? Assessing employee board representation in Australian government agencies

AbstractVarious scholars and political actors advocate workplace democratisation to give employees greater influence over decision‐making. Many suggest employee board representation (EBR) as a mechanism to facilitate this, but some question how influential employee board representatives (EBRs) are and whether they represent their colleagues’ views. This study investigates the extent to which EBR contributes to workplace democratisation, via a comparison of three Australian public sector organisations. The study found EBRs exerted significantly more influence at the Australian National University than at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Most EBRs wanted to draw upon staff experiences but their communication with colleagues was often constrained. Variances of influence were explained by the number of EBRs, the actions of the Chair, chief executive officer, government, and other board members. Two findings stand out as unique contributions: the importance of appointment powers to EBR influence in the public sector, and EBRs’ limited influence on labour issues in the Anglosphere due to the adversarial system of labour bargaining being positioned largely outside the boardroom. The study concludes that EBR is a non‐tokenistic form of workplace democratisation, albeit with a specific scope, which has utility within a mix of democratising mechanisms.Points for practitioners Most EBRs exerted a limited or moderate influence on decision‐making, but others exerted more significant influence. They were most influential on matters related to their experience and expertise and were largely unable to influence workers’ pay, conditions, and other labour issues. Most EBRs did not represent their colleagues in a transactional or direct sense, but drew upon their experiences as staff members when making decisions. However, EBRs had fluctuating issues communicating with their fellow employees, largely due to managerial direction around confidentiality. The number of SEDs on the board and the actions of other board members, the Chair, chief executive officer, and the government explained the variances in SEDs’ influence between agencies. This study's findings regarding EBR influence were middling compared to European research, but appointment powers were found to be particularly important in the public sector context. EBRs’ influence was found to be limited on labour issues, suggesting a potential clash between the corporatist inclination of EBR and the adversarial system of labour bargaining prevalent in the Anglosphere. Elected EBRs offer employees a non‐tokenistic form of representation but within a limited scope of strategy and oversight. Given factors that constrain SEDs’ influence and representativeness can be at least partly countered by policy design and political leadership, these findings bolster the policy case for extending EBR throughout the public sector.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment provisions within enterprise agreements in Australian universities, the role of the National Tertiary Education Union and collective bargaining

Collective bargaining is the foundation for democracy in the workplace, and a mechanism for ensuring workers in Australia have improved working conditions whilst striving to reduce inequality. Collective bargaining offers potential to improve democratic workplace participation and socio-economic status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, however, if done ineffectively can further entrench inequality. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workplace issues need to be at the forefront of bargaining. In the Higher Education sector, collective agreements with universities cover the majority of employees and are negotiated by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). The NTEU uses its bargaining power within the university sector to establish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets and other targeted provisions within enterprise agreements. These targets and other provisions aim to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation on campus, ensure fair and equitable working conditions and challenge entrenched inequality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers within their universities. The NTEU has for over 20 years advocated for and won Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment clauses in enterprise agreements. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee, under the direction of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members has pushed for these for the benefit of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples employed or yet to be employed in the higher education sector. The increase in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment in universities has and continues to be driven by NTEU.

The Difficulty of Making Good Work Available to All

ABSTRACTHow might good work – skilled, autonomous work which affords workers opportunities for meaningful social cooperation in decent conditions – be made available to all? I evaluate five commonly advanced strategies: an unregulated labor market, egalitarian redistribution of resources, state regulation, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy. Each, I argue, has significant limitations. An unregulated labor market ignores workers' unduly weak bargaining power vis‐à‐vis employers. Egalitarian redistribution alone fails to solve this problem due to distinctive and endemic imperfections of labor markets. Direct state regulation is insufficiently context‐sensitive and insufficiently dynamic in the face of technological and other developments. Collective bargaining gives workers only indirect and sometimes costly influence over their working conditions. And workplace democracy leaves workers vulnerable to collective action problems induced by competition between firms. I argue, however, that these strategies can be complemented in a promising way by ‘syndicalist economic democracy’: direct worker participation in the government of the economy, largely specific to particular occupations or economic sectors but above the level of the individual workplace.

What Do Americans Want from (Private) Government? Experimental Evidence Demonstrates that Americans Want Workplace Democracy

A majority of Americans spend a substantial amount of time at work where they have little to no say over many issues—a phenomenon that philosophers have likened to a “private government” that resembles a dictatorship. Is this because Americans are indifferent to or even prefer to work for firms that resemble dictatorships? To answer this question, we field a conjoint experiment on a nationally-representative sample of Americans to isolate public preferences over “corporate regime type.” We find that Americans prefer workplace democracy. In a second experiment, we find that most Americans support workplace democracy even after being exposed to framing emphasizing democratization’s costs. The results suggest that social scientists must look beyond public opinion to understand the lack of workplace democracy in the United States. This article forges new ground by applying a political science lens to corporate governance—a field ripe with politics but bereft of political science.

Political spillovers of workplace democracy in Germany

AbstractAlthough works councils provide a highly developed mechanism to promote workplace democracy, research on their consequences has been dominated by economic aspects. This study brings a new perspective to the understanding of works councils by examining their influence on workers’ political behavior. Political spillover theory suggests that participation in the firm's decision making has the potential to foster workers’ political participation in civic society. Our study for Germany indeed finds a positive association between the presence of a works council and workers’ interest in politics. This holds in panel data estimations including a large set of controls and accounting for unobserved individual‐specific factors. However, separate estimations by gender show a positive association between works councils and political interest only for men, but not for women. Traditional gender roles may make it difficult for women to be politically engaged even when a works council is present.

Workplace investigations, the epistemic power of managerialism and the hollowing out of the Norwegian model of co-determination

Workplace investigations are increasingly being used in Norwegian workplaces in both public and private sectors to investigate allegations of misconduct, harassment, blameworthy conditions, and other breaches of the Norwegian Working Environment Act. Workplace investigations are often triggered by complaints submitted through internal organizational whistleblowing and ‘speak up’ systems. With the EU Whistleblower Directive, ISO 37002:2021 Whistleblowing Management Systems – Guidelines and the ISO/AWI TS 37008 Internal Investigations in Organizations under development, we witness further standardization of whistleblowing systems and investigative procedures within organizations. And yet, these systems have so far received little critical attention. Our in-depth qualitative analysis of 22 such cases within standard employment relationships, informed by extensive literature review, secondary data and case files, has revealed that workplace investigations escalated conflicts, negatively affecting whistleblowers, trade union representatives, safety representatives, and other critical and dissenting voices, and that these systems leave little room for trade union representatives, co-determination or collective approaches to conflict resolution. We argue that this cannot be merely attributed to botched or biased investigations that have failed to follow ‘best practice’ guidelines. Instead, these are by default inquisitorial processes: the employer funds the investigation, creates the mandate and acts as prosecutor, police and judge in one. We analyse these methods and their epistemic power in light of the increasing privatization and pluralization of policing within the context of regulatory capitalism and the ‘criminalization’ of compliance, arguing that such methods are an expression of larger phenomena that lead to the progressive hollowing out of co-determination and workplace democracy and justice, in Norway and likely elsewhere.