In Defense of Workplace Democracy
Towards a Justification of the Firm–State Analogy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350693 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hélène Landemore (0000-0002-0726-4944, Yale University), Isabelle Ferreras (University of Louvain/FNRS, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 53-81 |
| Publication date | 2016-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0090591715600035 |
| OpenAlex | W2331943079 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 79 |
In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: (1) the objection from a difference in ends, (2) the objection from shareholders’ property rights, (3) the objection from worker’s consent, (4) the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, (5) the objection from workers’ (lack of) expertise, and (6) the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms
Analogy · Corporate governance · Democracy · Economics · Financial crisis · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Shareholder · Sociology · State (computer science · Finance · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
Social ownership democracy
Positive Freedom
Seeing Like a Firm
La démocratie organisationnelle autrement
Positive Liberty as Realizing the Essence of Man
Workplace Democracy Implies Economic Democracy
Workplace Democracy, Market Competition and Republican Self-Respect
Relational Equality and the Parallel Case for Workplace Democracy
Introducción al dossier
Democratizar el trabajo para radicalizar la democracia
Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
The possibility of a theory of change to tackle the climate crisis in a UK university
On the Efficiency Objection to Workplace Democracy
Working as Equal Moral Agents
Equality, efficiency and hierarchy in the workplace
Time, integration, and social membership in the firm
Peer Collaboration as a Relational Practice
StopHateForProfit and the Ethics of Boycotting by Corporations
Reciprocity, Burden-Sharing, and the Individual Duty of Productive Justice
Workplace democracy
Property as power
On Democratic Organizing and Organization Theory
Enough chit‐chat, strike! Deliberation and agonism in corporate governance
Corporate power and democracy
Introduction
The Networked Leviathan
An Instrumentalist Theory of Political Legitimacy
Nonideal Theory as Ideology
A Political Capability Approach to Corporate Power
Against Analogy
Models of shareholder democracy
Wirtschaftsdemokratie als Einübungspraxis
Climate Responsibilities of Business Corporations
The spirits of democratic enterprise
Workplace Democracy, Worker Voice, and the Politics of Precarity
Freedom, Work, and the Public Good
Weak and Strong Workplace Democracy
The Extent and Limits of (Workplace) Democracy
Limits of Workplace Democracy
Workplace democracy, algorithmic management, and epistemic agency
Where Democracy Should Be
The Political Morality of Associational Life
Socialist democracy
Radical labour republicanism
Epistemic injustice in workplace hierarchies
What political theory can learn from conceptual engineering
The Capitalist Enterprise as Territory and the Workers' Power
Workplace Democracy as the Liberal Republican Default
They Attend Strictly to Their Own Business”
Workplace democracy and corporate human rights responsibilities
Democratic equilibria
Ownership and control rights in democratic firms – a republican approach
Why agonistic workplace democracy
Work autonomy and workplace democracy
Are cooperatives more virtuous than corporations
The Demos of the democratic firm
Silicon law of oligarchy
Exit, voice, rebellion
The Epistemology of Corporate Power
Resistance to epistemic silencing in social services
Plural Cooperativism. The Material Basis of Democratic Corporate Governance
Challenging Democratic Deficit at Work Through Humoristic Criticism
Workplaces as Schools of Democratic Resilience? Conceptual Considerations About the Spillover Effect
Democratizing Organized Religion
The Political Nature of the Firm and the Cost of Norms
Learning from Democratic Practices
Migration and Demos in the Democratic Firm
The Social Subcontract
Recognitive arguments for workplace democracy
Social equality, social freedom and democracy
Workplace democracy-The recent debate
Political theories of the business corporation
Associative Democracy
Feminist Demands and the Problem of Housework
Engineering Territory
Meaningful Labour, Employee Ownership, and Workplace Democracy
Politiser le travail ou l'entreprise ? Trois registres de citoyenneté industrielle
Doing Democratic Theory Democratically
Politization in Labor Conflict
| Unique citing works | 79 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,78 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 78 |