Making businesses more democratic: an analysis grounded in political philosophy.

Authors

  • IÑIGO GONZÁLEZ RICOY

Keywords:

Workplace democracy, feasibility, efficiency, property, power, political philosophy.

Abstract

The main arguments for and against workplace democracy (WD) are analyzed, with a particular stress on cooperatives. Firstly, two historical approaches to WD are presented (section 1) and the agent, content and forms of decision-making in a democratic firm are briefly defined (section 2). The remainding sections tackle the main arguments for and against WD regarding its feasibility (section 3) and efficiency (section 4), along with three well —known arguments against it— the epistemic argument (section 5), the propertarian argument (section 6) and the libertarian argument (section 7). The paper closes by discussing some pragmatic alternatives to WD (section 8).

Published

2010-05-19

Issue

Section

ARTICLES