All the Things That Might be Workplace Democracy
Workplace democracy could mean a lot of things, and a lot of things could mean workplace democracy
In a recent paper, Colin Birkhead and I recall a story now a popular image in political science research:
Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, was one of many to share a version of the parable about a group of people in a dark room attempting to describe an elephant based on the part of the elephant they were touching. Holding aside the question of why and how these amateur biologists found themselves in such a predicament, the moral of the story is that they were giving different descriptions of the same thing.
Workplace democracy is one such elephant. For the last few months, as part of a potential project with Simon Pek, we have been looking at the litany of terms scholars use to describe similar democratic processes at an organizational level—different parts of the same elephant of workplace democracy. Here is what we have found, with a focus on academic literature reviews for each of each term.
Workplace Democracy
The most common, popular usage of the phrase workplace democracy seems to be in reference to labor unions, which has a rich tradition of study. But academics consider workplace democracy much more broadly and across multiple disciplines. The most interesting recently published works are a pair of theoretical pieces in defense of workplace democracy by Helene Landemore and Isabelle Ferreras, and a 2023 survey of Americans’ desire for more workplace democracy.
One previous wave of focused research on workplace democracy was in the 1990s and 2000s, and focused on workplace democracy spillovers, or whether democratic workplaces make for more effective political citizens. Scholars have begun to revisit this question, too.
The most recent review of workplace democracy we’ve been able to find is an unpublished piece from 2007 by leadership scholar Tim Hatcher. An edited version of his list of expressions of workplace democracy:
Open communication and enhanced flow of information
Open governance and worker control over functions that impact them, including job design, work requirements and quality
Individual freedom of expression and choice
Gender and ethnic equity
Flatter, team-based organizational structures and non-hierarchical controls
Organizational Democracy
Organizational democracy expands the application of democracy beyond the enterprise to other organizations. In this 2019 review of psychological research, Weber and colleagues define organizational democracy as ongoing, broad based, and institutionalized employee participation. Written rules, regulations, and board membership are ways employers can enable employees to exert substantial influence on tactical and strategical decisions.
Industrial Democracy
According to a 2020 paper, industrial democracy is a set of “collective agreements and social dialogue” that enable employee participation and representation. There is a Journal of Economic and Industrial Democracy, but if this chart is any indication, the phrase fell out of favor after the 1980s; the last well-cited literature review we found was from 1983. It breaks industrial democracy into six categories of varying clarity:
Collective bargaining (union representation)
Workers' representation on boards (codetermination)
Joint consultation and information (works councils)
Humanization of work (probably closest to today’s good jobs conversation)
Self-management (the worker control part of worker ownership)
Economic democracy (a society-wide consideration)
Employee Participation, Involvement, and Voice
Employee participation examines the connection between employees and employers during decision making. According to this 2005 review, by Summers and Hyman, employee participation improves company performance by changing employee attitudes, resulting in increased job satisfaction by enabling employees to share input and ideas.
Employee participation is sometimes articulated as employee involvement. According to this 1992 review, employee involvement is used to indicate that these initiatives were largely those designed and introduced by management and intended to improve communications with employees, to generate greater commitment, and enhance employee contributions to the organization.
A weaker form of employee participation, according to this 2014 review by Mowbray and colleagues, is worker voice. Participation, according to another review, is an institutional feature where managers grant their employees participation through practices that they implement; In contrast, employee voice involves employees going to their employer to make their concerns known.
Psychological Ownership
Psychological ownership is the fulfillment of three basic human desires: efficacy, a sense of belonging and self-identity. There are two types of psychological ownership: promotive, dealing with accomplishments and aspirations; and preventative, dealing with a sense of duty and obligation.
In their 2017 review, Sarah Dawkins and colleagues frame psychological ownership as either job-based or organization-based PO. In organization-based PO, workers are shown to associate with the company using possessive vocabulary as in “this is ‘my’ organization”. Job-based PO looks at employees’ connections/allegiance to their job.
When democratic institutions are in place at the organizational level, research shows that self-reported feelings of psychological ownership increase. As such, psychological ownership can best be described as an effect, or product, of workplace democracy.
Even More 😅
That is far from an exhaustive list, but it’s a place to begin. In a future post, we might also consider collaborative governance, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical workplaces, economic bicameralism, workplace republicanism, cooperative economics and economic democracy. And I’m sure we’re still missing a few!* Drop us a note in the comments about what we should include and/or cover next.
*An update on 2/9: Ahmed and Ahmed 2022 has an even longer list. They “began with thirty-two search terms enormously [sic] used as a synonym for organizational democracy, including industrial democracy, workplace democracy, participative management, participation in decision making, worker ownership, postbureaucratic, empowerment, union-based organizations, worker-owned firm, alternative to hierarchical models of organizations, corporate democracy, flat organizations, network organizations, worker participation, self-directed organizations, participative firms, economic democracy, democratic decision making, decentralized authority, less hierarchical firms, worker ownership, employees stock ownership, employee ownership, self-management, democratic worker organizations, union democracy, labor-managed firms, human economy, democracy in firms, market democracy, and voice at work.”