Whence Democracy? A Review and Critique of the Conceptual Dimensions and Implications of the Business Case for Organizational Democracy

Predominantly in the USA, the business case for organizational democracy has recently emerged out of new wave management and is characterized by a communitarian challenge to the economic efficiency of hierarchical modes of organizational governance. It presents democratization as a pragmatic remedial device to counter the symptoms of employee alienation and ameliorate the organizational problems associated with destabilized capitalism. This paper outlines the origins and nature of the business case for organizational democracy through a comparison with new wave management; uncovers its underlying rationale in terms of an array of constitutive assumptions that justify and differentiate its prescriptions for the workplace; and considers the implications of using a business case to legitimate the democratization of work organizations. It concludes by outlining the paradoxes inherent in the business case and suggests that, rather than appropriating the business case’s functionalist teleology, it is at the interconnection of politics, ethics and knowledge, together with more consideration of the values and particularism which underpin trust in hierarchy, whence organizational democracy can best gather its rationale and legitimization.