Workplace Democracy Research Articles

Challenges, the Strategic State, and Agility in European Public Governance

"Abstract This paper is concerned with leadership capacity at national level to mobilise society to take up challenges. It uses empirical analysis to explain how, in a European context, this capacity covaries with the development of strategic state capabilities. The evidence is used to explore the conditions in which strategic state capabilities have a positive effect on the capacity of leadership to mobilise society. These conditions include factors related to the public: social capital, average subjective wellbeing (happiness), and political attitudes relating to government and democracy (having a voice that was listened to, public trust in the government, and the public’s satisfaction with the working of democracy). It is suggested that strategically led governments with high levels of coordination in the civil service, with practices and abilities consistent with learning and agility, and with good engagement with, and good support from, the public and the organisations of civil society, tend to have national leadership elites that have a strong capacity for mobilization of society to take up challenges. In the conclusions it is stated that the democratic cultures of Europe may require more ‘open government’ and more inclusiveness so that their embryonic strategic states can better leverage information and resources of society, so that governments can offer more powerful societal leadership."

Spillover effect of workplace democracy: A conceptual revision.

The so-called "spillover thesis" by Pateman is one of the prominent theoretical explanations for why workplace-based participation and democracy could induce stronger political participation. By this thesis, Pateman underscored the relevance of industrial workplaces as relevant places where citizens can be socialized regarding democratic attitudes while proposing the educative effect of workplace democracy and assuming a strong linkage between workplace-based and political participation as moderated by self-efficacy. The spillover thesis has received a controversial consideration as previous empirical studies have provided inconsistent evidence. Some empirical undertakings support the assumption by Pateman and indicate a positive relationship between workplace democracy and societal effects, like increased moral and community orientation or higher levels of political participation among employees from companies with higher degrees of workplace democracy. Other empirical studies yield results that do not confirm the thesis. Scholars have discussed method-based shortcomings of the previous empirical research while pointing to the inconsistency of definitions and operationalizations as the main shortcoming. In contrast to that, systematic conceptual consideration of the spillover thesis and the accompanying scholarship are still lacking. The present article addresses this shortcoming and provides a critical reflection on the spillover thesis and corresponding research. It aims at identifying the main conceptual shortcomings and providing avenues for future theoretical undertakings in analyzing whether and how participation at the workplace is related to participation in political domains.

The Boundary Problem in Workplace Democracy: Who Constitutes the Corporate Demos?

This article brings to bear findings from the debate on the boundary problem in democratic theory on discussions of workplace democracy to argue that workplace democrats’ focus on workers is unjustified and that more constituencies will have to be included in any prospective scheme of workplace democracy. It thereby provides a valuable and underdiscussed perspective on workplace democracy that goes beyond the debate’s usual focus on the clarification and justification of workplace democrats’ core claim. It also goes beyond approaches like stakeholder theory in law and economics that determine decision-making rights without taking into account genuinely democratic considerations. My discussion proceeds by considering three principles for inclusion from democratic theory for the specific case of the corporation. I submit that two of them, the all-coerced and the all-subjected principle, are not appropriate for this specific case, because they cannot capture the distinguishing features of the corporation. The all-affected principle however is appropriate but has a very wide range. I further argue that this is not as big of a problem as it first might seem and that this principle is still the most appropriate for defining the demos of the democratic corporation. The article closes by pointing out the consequences of this result for the workplace democracy debate and for the legitimacy of the market as a coordination mechanism.

What sort of workplace democracy can democratic management achieve in China?

AbstractThe year 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the adoption of democratic management (DM) provisions in China. DM, once predominant in state‐owned enterprises, has now been extended to all enterprises. Democratising workplaces in China represents institutional experimentation. Both DM‐related research and practice thus require updating. Ten years on, a social consensus on DM's orientation and legitimacy remains elusive. Can expanding DM inspire industrial democracy or strengthen Party control over market‐oriented workplaces? Or is DM merely window dressing as previous studies suggest? This article aims to uncover the type of workplace democracy that DM can achieve in China. A triangle of DM is established and integrated with institutional theory as an analytical framework to explore the causes and characteristics of DM in six case companies.

Creating the Conditions for Intergenerational Justice: Social Capital and Compliance

Creating the Conditions for Intergenerational Justice: Social Capital and Compliance

Free Riding and Workplace Democracy—Heterogeneous Task Preferences and Sorting

A novel laboratory experiment is used to show that mismatching between task preferences and task assignment strongly undermines worker performance and leads to free riding in teams. Unlike prior experiments using real effort tasks, task preferences are elicited from all workers. Under team-based remuneration (revenue sharing), free riding is significant, but this effect is largely driven by those working on undesired tasks. Workers’ endogenous sorting into tasks improves productivity as it mitigates task mismatching although workers’ task selection per se has only small effects on work performance and effort provisions beyond the positive sorting effects. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark [Grant 4182-00163]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4556 .

Data-owning democracy or digital socialism?

ABSTRACT This article contrasts two reform proposals articulated in recent debates about how to democratize the digital economy: data-owning democracy and digital socialism. A data-owning democracy is a political-economic regime characterized by the widespread distribution of data as capital among citizens, whereas digital socialism entails the social ownership of productive assets in the digital economy and popular control over digital services. The article argues that while a degree of complementarity exists between the two, there are important limitations to theories of data-owning democracy that have not yet received significant attention within the literature. The bulk of the article highlights three ways in which digital socialists would consider a data-owning democracy to fall short of achieving a more just digital economy: a lack of workplace democracy, limitations in terms of scope, and a lack of democratic control over long-term investment decisions in new technology. The article thus contributes to determining what is at stake in recent debates about how to democratize the digital economy.

A Real Utopia Under What Conditions? The Economic and Social Benefits of Workplace Democracy in Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Given consistent evidence of its social benefits but questions about its market viability, this paper examines the conditions under which workplace democracy can be understood as a “real utopia”; a viable form of organization that is both economically productive and socially welfare enhancing. Conceptualizing democratic firms as organizations with formally distributed authority and collectivist norms, we argue that democratic firms will operate more productively in knowledge intensive industries, compared with conventional firms in the same industries, because they give authority to those with relevant knowledge and encourage intrafirm information sharing. Next, focusing on intrafirm wage inequality as a key social welfare outcome, we argue that knowledge-intensive sectors are also settings where the benefits of workplace democracy are likely to be greater. Knowledge intensive industries tend to generate greater intrafirm inequality through the adoption of market-based employment policies and reliance on unique expertise, yet the formal structure and collectivist norms of democratic firms are likely to limit these mechanisms of inequality, generating inequality reductions. We test these hypotheses with longitudinal linked employer-employee data from French cooperatives and conventional firms, including firms that shift organizational structures over time. We find robust support for our hypothesis about economic performance and moderate support for our hypothesis about social performance. Funding: This research has been generously supported by the Berg Center for Ethics, the Katz International Business Center, and the Bill Nobles Fellowship, as well as a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the “Investissements d’Avenir” program [Reference ANR-10-EQPX-17-Centre d’accès sécurisé aux données]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1622 .

The Effect of Workplace Democracy on Improving Employee Performance: An Analytical Study of the Opinions of a Sample of Employees at the General Company for Grain Trade / Diwaniya Branch

The researcher seeks to study the effect of workplace democracy on improving employee performance, considering the workplace democracy is changing through six sub-dimensions represented in (decentralization control system, independent groups, criticism system, organizational justice, free exchange of information, individual rights) while representing improved performance The variable dependent employees on a set of sub-dimensions through which the performance of the employees can be measured, which is represented in (productivity, work turnover, innovation, job satisfaction, absence of work, quality). The research problem was focused through a set of questions that were aimed at identifying the impact of workplace democracy on improving the performance of workers and in light of it a set of hypotheses was formulated to diagnose the impact of workplace democracy on the performance of workers, and the General Company for Grain Trade / Diwaniya branch was chosen as a community For the study, the researcher adopted in her study the questionnaire for the purpose of obtaining the data, as it was distributed on a random sample of employees in the company amounted to (191) employees out of a total of (362) employees, and it was analyzed using the statistical program (SPSS vr. 24), and The study reached There are a set of results, the most important of which is accepting the research hypothesis that confirms the existence of a correlation and impact of workplace democracy on improving employee performance, and in light of which recommendations were formulated to overcome obstacles and increase the contribution of workplace democracy to improving the performance of company employees.

Firms as coalitions of democratic cultures: towards an organizational theory of workplace democracy

ABSTRACT 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.

Architects in Enjoyment: Fun and Politics in the Swedish Cycling Experience, 1918–39

Interwar Swedish cycling offers an opportunity to consider the relationship between fun and politics in sport. A collection of sources which reveals that light-hearted fun was central to the experience of cycling, whether through enjoying the landscape, adventuring abroad, or cycling with friends and family, also shows that cycling was connected intricately to the policies of the Swedish Social Democratic Worker’s Party (SAP). The SAP programme unlocked cycling for swathes of Swedes, but, more profoundly, enjoying riding a bike also helped to foster new attitudes and behaviours which converged with SAP policies. Simply having fun when cycling encouraged new approaches to nature and travel abroad, and new patterns of sociability, which made cyclists architects, together with the SAP and other leisure time and outdoor organisations, in constructing the new type of society that emerged in interwar Sweden.

Cabinet Reshuffles and Prime-Ministerial Performance in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract Prime ministers (PMs) significantly contribute to making parliamentary democracy work, but cabinet reshuffles can undermine the PM's ability to perform successfully. New ministers may have less policy expertise, intensify intra-cabinet struggles and hamper the control of government bureaucracy. This article explores the relationship between cabinet reshuffles and prime-ministerial performance in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Building on a data set covering 131 cabinets in 11 CEE countries between 1990 and 2018, we find that frequent cabinet reshuffles decrease prime-ministerial performance. In particular, the reshuffling of ministers belonging to other coalition parties than the PM's unfolds a strong negative effect on prime-ministerial performance, while reshuffles in core portfolios and turnover of ministers from the PM party have less negative consequences. These results have important implications for understanding executive politics and government stability in the dynamic environments of CEE democracies and beyond.

Knowledge institutions in constitutional democracy: reflections on ‘the press’

ABSTRACT Knowledge institutions—understood as ongoing entities with a central purpose of creating or disseminating knowledge according to disciplinary standards—are central to the workings of a constitutional democracy. The press is made up of knowledge institutions that should be recognized as such. Moreover, and contrary to the suggestions of some jurists, the press can be reasonably defined, without suspect content discrimination, in light of its special role in seeking and reporting knowledge; different definitions may be appropriate for different purposes, such as limited access to physical press briefings as compared to privileges for confidential sources. Finally, knowledge institutions, including the press, are interdependent on each other, which means that all knowledge institutions have stakes in the well-being of others.

Non-domination and constituent power: Socialist republicanism versus radical democracy

Two of the dominant frameworks for criticizing capitalism and liberal democracy in contemporary political theory is Socialist republicanism, on the one hand, and radical democracy, on other hand. Whereas radical democratic thinkers have for decades criticized liberal democracy for being elitist, hierarchical and outright anti-popular, socialist republicans have for the last 10 years developed critiques of capitalism centred on the neo-republican idea of freedom as non-domination and proposed various arguments for workplace democracy and cooperative forms of ownership. Despite the common ambition of uncovering hierarchical relations of economic, political and social power, and creating new egalitarian and participatory modes of political organization, no systematic comparison of socialist republicanism and radical democracy exists. This paper fills this gap by comparing the different understandings of (a) institutions and (b) political action and (c) their diverging historical and political relations to socialism.

India's democracy before the democratic discontent, 1940s–1970s

AbstractThe last decade and a half saw what we can call a historical turn in the study of India's democracy. By drawing on some of these new works and on archival materials, this article offers a new way of thinking about the rooting and workings of democracy in India and its endurance. The article explores how India and Indians produced a concrete and convincing notion of a shared functioning purpose, a common good, for their deeply plural society, while allowing a meaningful space for the conflicts and inherent contradictions that underlay their democracy. I suggest that the persistence of these conflicts was important for the resilience of India's democracy. I examine three interrelated processes that with independence contributed to this outcome: the nature of the constitution and its making; the first election and the preparation for them between 1947 and 1952; and the articulation of the principle of state resource distribution and its development projects. The conclusion reflects on the significance of the historical turn to our understanding of post‐independence India.

Policy’s role in democratic conflict management

This article proposes rethinking democratic conflict management by acknowledging the increasingly important role policy plays in it. As the debate on the health of democracy intensifies, research on how democracies manage and absorb political and societal conflicts becomes broadly relevant. Existing theories and perspectives view conflict management through the lens of elections and other institutional mechanisms, or they examine the social and economic preconditions for successful conflict management while inadequately understanding how policies contribute to conflict management. The article develops a theoretical framework that allows for the analysis of how policies’ material and interpretive effects influence societal conflicts and thereby strengthen (or weaken) democracy. While the article focuses on hypothesis-generation rather than hypothesis-testing, it draws on a large variety of policy and case examples to corroborate and illustrate the theoretical expectations embodied in the framework. Insights into policy’s role in democratic conflict management expand our understanding of the challenges to democracy in the twenty-first century and create new possibilities for comparative, policy-focused research into what makes democracy work.

Will the real distributed leadership stand up please? The construction of ‘reality’ through policy rhetoric, interpretation and evaluation by post-primary inspectors in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT Many narratives that advocate distributed leadership, as a prescribed model, resonate richly with certain democratic values which can beguile contrary and exploitative practices. With this ambivalence in mind important threads in the evolution of distributed leadership to the top of the school policy hierarchy, in the Irish post-primary experience, are examined. Policy documents are critically analyzed, as are school inspection reports which show the leadership practices as understood and endorsed by some school inspectors. What emerges is a complex picture which includes a cleavage between a rhetoric of workplace democracy and a reality of management work carried out voluntarily and unpaid, including activities which arguably are not leadership at all. A connected conclusion is that economics can be a determinant of what constitutes distributed leadership.

The Dynamics of Local Participation

As part of the “new public participation movement,” participatory budgeting is a systematic attempt to ameliorate institutionalized inequality, inequity, and injustice by enhancing how democracy works and expanding who participates genuinely. This commitment to more democratic, inclusive decision-making is important for empowering communities who have been subject to marginalization and exploitation. However, participatory budgeting must be implemented as community-based work if local participation in shaping government policies, programming, and funding priorities is to be considered a legitimate and trusted process. This article examines participation within the framework of community-based philosophy and epistemology. Guidelines are provided for how participatory budgeting facilitators should approach communities with a genuine sense of humility and openness. This dynamic requires facilitators to form collaborative, dialogical relationships with communities and allows local knowledge to inform and drive the budgeting process.

The Role of Accountability in Workplace Democracy

Roberto Frega argues for the advancement of workplace democracy theorisation by synergising the conceptual pathways of various disciplines. He places a particular emphasis on the practice of employee involvement, which, according to him, constitutes one of the three pillars of workplace democracy, the other two being voice and representation. The present commentary broadens the interdisciplinary horizons of this debate by reflecting on the central role of accountability in workplace democracy and the workings of the three pillars identified by Frega. The commentary explores the potential of accountability and the insights drawn from critical accounting research to translate democratic ideals into meaningful and sustainable organisational practices and so strengthen workplace democracy.

Economic Democracy, Democratic Planning, and Human Autonomy: A Comment on Adaman and Devine

This essay explores Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine’s position that democratic planning would expand human autonomy. It argues that economic democracy involving workplace democracy, private property, and widespread markets would generally be more autonomy enhancing than a system of democratic planning with social ownership and few markets. However, it acknowledges the problems ecological limits may place on the autonomy of future populations, making the choice between democratic planning and economic democracy more ambiguous.