Book Chapter
The joint pursuit of commercial and societal objectives will likely require non-traditional (non-hierarchical) ways of organizing.
This chapter discusses the prospects for one promising alternative: “organizational democracy.” This is a flatter form characterized by distributed decision rights, a deliberative culture, and employee ownership.
Other alterna- tives to hierarchy have emphasized individualistic values of autonomy and empowerment. In contrast, organizational democracy emphasizes the collective. Relevant work in political philosophy underlines analogous dimensions including representation, deliberation, and a collective point of view. The last point makes it different from work on solidarity and class or group interest.
In multi-objective organizational democracy there are trade-offs and these are negotiated. Representation and deliberation come to the foreground.
Unlike in traditional organizations, however, negotiations are not regarded as transaction costs to be minimized; rather they are brought to the foreground and cultivated. The chapter illustrates these ideas and discusses challenges and avenues for future research
Faculty
Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour
