Abstract In this paper, I pursue the question whether extending democratic rights to work is good in the broadest possible sense of that term: good for workers, firms, market economies, and democratic states. The argument makes two assumptions in a broadly consequentialist framework. First, the configuration of any relationship among persons in which there is less rather than more coercion makes individuals better off. Second, extending democratic rights to work will entail costs and benefits to both the power and authority (...) of employers and meaningful work for employees. These costs and benefits cannot be determined in advance because they are largely empirical, but there are still good reasons for expanding worker participation all-things-considered. First, I examine the parallel case for extending democratic rights to the workplace based on several similarities between politics and work organization. In addition, I consider the objections from voluntariness and efficiency. Although both objections raise interesting problems I believe that a properly formulated conception of democratic workplaces can answer them. In the final section, I sketch a minimal conception of these rights at the level of the firm that does not require a large-scale transformation of the market economy. (shrink)

Business firms play an increasingly influential role in contemporary societies, which has led many scholars to return to the question of the democratisation of corporate governance. However, the possibility of democratic deliberation within firms has received only marginal attention in the current debate. This article fills this gap in the literature by making a normative case for democratic deliberation at the workplace and empirically assessing the deliberative capacity of self-organised teams within business firms. It is based on sixteen in-depth interviews (...) in six German firms which practice various forms of self-organised teamwork. The article argues that self-organised teamwork can create a space for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation by suspending authoritarian control structures within business firms. Finally, the article proposes the consideration of firms not only as necessary parts of a larger deliberative system but also as deliberative systems in themselves. (shrink)

Political theorists have recently sought to replace the liberal, contractual theory of the firm with a political view that models the authority relation of employee to firm, and its appropriate regulation, on that of subject to state. This view is liable to serious difficulties, however, given existing discontinuities between corporate and civil authority as to their coerciveness, entry and exit conditions, scope, legal standing, and efficiency constraints. I here inspect these, and argue that, albeit in some cases significant, such discontinuities (...) fail to undermine the firm/state analogy, either because they are not significant enough to do so or because the particular trait on which they hinge is not decisive for how authority, in the state and in the firm, should be regulated to be legitimate. A pro tanto requirement exists, I thus argue, that corporate authority be held to regulatory norms comparable to those legitimate states abide by, including civil liberties, rule-of-law constraints, and accountability to subjects. (shrink)

The article reviews the recent debate about workplace democracy. It first presents and critically discusses arguments in favor of democratizing the firm that are based on the analogy with states, meaningful work, the avoidance of unjustified hierarchies, and beneficial effects on political democracy. The second part presents and critically discusses arguments against workplace democracy that are based on considerations of efficiency, the difficulties of a transition towards democratic firms, and liberal commitments such as the rights of employees and owners to (...) work for or invest in nondemocratic firms. The conclusion summarizes the debate and argues that experiments with democratic workplaces as what Erik Olin Wright calls “real utopias” could deliver new insights and thus move the discussion forward. (shrink)

The Wage Setting Process In this paper I will defend a conception of fairness in labor markets. I will argue that we should take a procedural approach to the evaluation of fairness in markets. The procedural approach defended here goes beyond the traditional procedural view that requires only the absence of force and fraud. But it avoids the pitfalls of the other classical conception of fairness in the market: the idea of a just wage or just price. Fairness in markets (...) is analogous to fairness in the democratic process. I will start with a discussion and critique of Joseph Heath’s stimulating discussion of fairness in labor markets. Though I agree in part with his assessment of the just wage tradition, I will argue that there is room for thinking about fairness in markets. I will then lay out a conception of fairness that is based on the analogy with democracy. The procedural idea of equal power can be given an interpretation both in perfectly competitive markets and in imperfectly competitive markets. I will show how this approach has implications for conceiving of how firms ought to be organized and for defining a fair process of wage setting in the essentially highly imperfect conditions of the labor market. (shrink)

La science économique a toujours été réticente à l’égard du concept de pouvoir, qui ne saurait être opérationnalisé dans les modèles microéconomiques et qui justifierait des rationalisations ex post. Pourtant, le pouvoir est un vecteur d’institutionnalisation sociale que les économistes se doivent d’intégrer pour faire de la firme un objet de recherche de l’économie politique et réaliser de nouveaux progrès explicatifs. Partant, l’article ambitionne de proposer une analyse méthodologique renouvelée du pouvoir, lequel implique une structure collective tout en reposant sur (...) des individus acteurs. Fort de cette clarification conceptuelle, un essai de définition du pouvoir dans la firme est proposé : le pouvoir est la capacité latente (qui sera ou non exercée) d’une entité A à contraindre et à dessiner les choix d’une entité B de telle sorte que le comportement et les actions de B soient orientés dans un sens favorable à A, et ce par des mécanismes intrinsèques à la relation socioéconomique qui peuvent être formels ou informels. Une telle définition du pouvoir permet de reconsidérer l’agir transformatif dans la firme et de lier le pouvoir aux dispositifs relationnels des organisations du capitalisme. (shrink)

La science économique a toujours été réticente à l’égard du concept de pouvoir, qui ne saurait être opérationnalisé dans les modèles microéconomiques et qui justifierait des rationalisations ex post. Pourtant, le pouvoir est un vecteur d’institutionnalisation sociale que les économistes se doivent d’intégrer pour faire de la firme un objet de recherche de l’économie politique et réaliser de nouveaux progrès explicatifs. Partant, l’article ambitionne de proposer une analyse méthodologique renouvelée du pouvoir, lequel implique une structure collective tout en reposant sur (...) des individus acteurs. Fort de cette clarification conceptuelle, un essai de définition du pouvoir dans la firme est proposé : le pouvoir est la capacité latente (qui sera ou non exercée) d’une entité A à contraindre et à dessiner les choix d’une entité B de telle sorte que le comportement et les actions de B soient orientés dans un sens favorable à A, et ce par des mécanismes intrinsèques à la relation socioéconomique qui peuvent être formels ou informels. Une telle définition du pouvoir permet de reconsidérer l’agir transformatif dans la firme et de lier le pouvoir aux dispositifs relationnels des organisations du capitalisme. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 202-220, Summer 2022.

In this paper, I set out to defend the claim that a central principle in democratic theory, the all-subjected principle, applies not only when one is subject to a rule by a state but also when one is subject to a rule by a ‘non-state’ unit. I argue that self-government is the value underlying the all-subjected principle that explains why a subjected individual should be included because she is subjected. Given this, it is unfounded to limit the principle to the (...) state, as subjection which threatens self-government occurs in non-state units such as corporations and families. This means that following the all-subjected principle surprisingly implies that we ought to have family and workplace democracy. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to critically examine a set of assumptions that pervades human resource management and HR practices. I shall argue that they experience a remarkable ethics deficit, explain why this is so, and explore how the UN Global Compact labor principles may help taking ethics seriously in HRM. This paper contributes to the understanding and critical examination of the undisclosed beliefs underlying theory and practice in human resource management and to the examination of how the UN Global (...) Compact’s ideal of “decent work” may offer some promising avenues for the development of ethics in HRM. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the usage of Albert Hirschman’s categories of market behaviour as of exit and voice in debates about workplace democracy by taking seriously his critique of the neoclassical analysis of competition. Pro-market liberals are generally hostile to the idea of workplace democracy and tend to favour top-down hierarchies as a way of organising labour. This hostility is generally inspired by the neoclassical analysis of exploitation and efficiency, which leads them to defend distributions achieved through exit-based competitive equilibria. Following (...) Hirschman, I propose to consider a hypothetical alternative: a democratic equilibrium, reached through the use of voice. I show that it would present the same appealing characteristics than its competitive counterpart while also accounting for the non-ideal conditions in which markets operate. Support for free markets should entail support for workplace democracy minimally understood as a strengthening of voice. (shrink)

The paper discusses the structure, applications, and plausibility of the much-used parallel-case argument for workplace democracy. The argument rests on an analogy between firms and states according to which the justification of democracy in the state implies its justification in the workplace. The contribution of the paper is threefold. First, the argument is illustrated by applying it to two usual objections to workplace democracy, namely, that employees lack the expertise required to run a firm and that only capital suppliers should (...) have a say over the governance of the firm. Second, the structure of the argument is unfolded. Third, two salient similarities between firms and states regarding their internal and external effects and the standing of their members are addressed in order to asses the potential and limits of the argument, as well as three relevant differences regarding the voluntariness of their membership, the narrowness of their goals, and the stiffness of the competition they face. After considering these similarities and differences, the paper contends that the the parallel-case argument provides a sound reason in favor of democracy in the workplace—a reason, however, that needs to be importantly qualified and that is only pro tanto. (shrink)