Workplace democracy

Last updated

Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms to the workplace, such as voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, and systems of appeal. It can be implemented in a variety of ways, depending on the size, culture, and other variables of an organization. [1] [2]

Contents

Theory

Economic argument

From as early as the 1920s, scholars have been exploring the idea of increasing employee participation and involvement. They sought to learn whether including employees in organizational decision-making would lead to increased effectiveness and productivity within the organization. According to Lewin, individuals who are involved in decision-making also have increased openness to change. [3] Different participative techniques can have either a stronger impact on morale than productivity, while others have the reverse effect. Success of the employee-owned and operated Mondragon suggests economic benefits from workplace democracy.

Citizenship argument

Workplace democracy may encourage public participation in a government's political process. Skills developed from democracy in the workplace can transfer to improved citizenship and result in a better functioning democracy. [4] Workers in a democratic environment may also develop a greater concern for the common good, which also transfers to fundamental citizenship.

Ethical justification

Philosopher Robert Dahl claims that, "If democracy is justified in governing the state, it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises." [5] Some political scientists have questioned whether the state-firm analogy is the most appropriate way to justify workplace democratization. [6]

Employee power and representation

Workers working for democratic leaders report positive results such as group member satisfaction, friendliness, group mindedness, 'we' statements, worker motivation, creativity, and dedication to decisions made within an organization. [7]

When workplace democracy is used the effect typically is raised employee potential, employee representation, higher autonomy, and equal power within an organization (Rolfsen, 2011).

Political association

Workplace democracy theory closely follows political democracy, especially in larger workplaces. Democratic workplace organization is often associated with trade unions, anarchist, and socialist (especially libertarian socialist) movements. Most unions have democratic structures at least for selecting the leader, and sometimes these are seen as providing the only democratic aspects to the workplace. Not every workplace that lacks a union lacks democracy, and not every workplace that has a union necessarily has a democratic way to resolve disputes. [8]

Historically, some unions have been more committed to workplace democracy than others. The Industrial Workers of the World pioneered the archetypal workplace democracy model, the Wobbly Shop, in which recallable delegates were elected by workers, and other norms of grassroots democracy were applied. This is still used in some organizations, notably Semco and in the software industry.

Spanish anarchists, Mohandas Gandhi's Swadeshi movement, and farm and retail co-operative movements, all made contributions to the theory and practice of workplace democracy and often carried that into the political arena as a "more participatory democracy." The Green parties worldwide have adopted workplace democracy as a central platform, and also often mimic workplace democracy norms such as gender equity, co-leadership, deliberative democracy applied to any major decision, and leaders who don't do policy. The democratic socialist parties have supported the notion of workplace democracy and democratically controlled institutions.

The best known and most studied example of a successfully democratic national labor union in the United States are the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America,[ citation needed ] known throughout the labor movement as the UE. An independent trade Union, the UE was built from the bottom-up, and takes pride in its motto that "The Members Run This Union!" [8]

The Menshevik led Democratic Republic of Georgia experimented with workplace democracy by promoting cooperatives in the economy. These cooperatives were ended when Georgia was annexed into the Soviet Union. [9] [10]

In Sweden, the Swedish Social Democratic Party made laws and reforms from 1950-70 to establish more democratic workplaces. [11]

Salvador Allende championed a large number of such experiments in Chile when he became president of Chile in 1970. [12]

Current approaches

Limits on management

Many[ quantify ] organizations began to realize by the 1960s that tight control by too few people was encouraging groupthink, increasing turnover in staff and a loss of morale among qualified people helpless to appeal what they saw as misguided, uninformed, or poorly thought-out decisions. Often[ quantify ] employees who publicly criticize such poor decision making of their higher management are penalized or even fired from their jobs on some pretext or other. The comic strip Dilbert has become popular satirizing this type of oblivious management, iconically represented by the Pointy-haired Boss, a nameless and clueless social climber. The Dilbert principle has been accepted as fact by some.[ by whom? ]

Much management philosophy has focused on trying to limit manager power, differentiate leadership versus management, and so on. Henry Mintzberg, Peter Drucker and Donella Meadows were three very notable theorists addressing these concerns in the 1980s. Mintzberg and Drucker studied how executives spent their time, Meadows how change and leverage to resist it existed at all levels in all kinds of organizations.

Adhocracy, functional leadership models and reengineering were all attempts to detect and remove administrative incompetence. Business process and quality management methods in general remove managerial flexibility that is often perceived as masking managerial mistakes, but also preventing transparency and facilitating fraud, as in the case of Enron. Had managers been more accountable to employees, it is argued,[ by whom? ] owners and employees would not have been defrauded.

Equity model

In the equity model, employees own voting shares of their company, most commonly through an employee stock ownership plan. The equity model of workplace democracy exists when bottom-up practices, such as participatory management, are combined with the top-down influence provided by their voting rights. [13]

Codetermination

German law specifically mandates democratic worker participation in the oversight of workplaces with 2000 or more employees. Similar laws exist in Denmark for businesses with more than 20 workers and France for businesses with more than 5000 workers.

Staff and Worker Representative Congresses

In China, a form of workplace democracy is mandated by law for state-owned enterprises. [14] This is done through Staff and Worker Representative Congresses (SWRCs), composed of workers directly elected by all workers in the workplace to represent them. [15]

Examples of companies organized by workplace democracy

Mondragon

The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is the largest worker cooperative in the world, and as such the largest corporation that operates some form of workplace democracy. The Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff states it is "a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production". [16]

Marland Mold

Marland Mold was a company started in 1946 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, by Severino Marchetto and Paul Ferland. The company at first, designed and built steel molds for plastic products throughout the 1950s and 60s. In 1969 the owners sold the company to VCA which was later bought by The Ethyl Corporation. The Marland Mold employees voted to join the International Union of Electrical Workers, because of a dispute that took place over health insurance. The plant's manager started to pay less attention and put less time into the Pittsfield plant so the profits declined. The plant was put up for sale in 1992. The employees ended up buying out the plant, even though they weren't fans of employee ownership before, they needed to save their jobs. There immediately was a burst in production and they were able to produce molds that normally took the 3,000 hours to make in 2,200 hours. They had financial stake in the company now which gave them new motivation for the company's success. The other two ideas that were key components to their success was the education of all members about their new roles, and building an ownership culture within the organization. In 1995, they had officially bought all ownership stock and buyout lenders and the company was completely employee owned. Through all of this employees were also able to gain a broader perspective on the company, like being able to understand others views of different conflicts in the workplace. In 2007, Marland Mold celebrated their 15th anniversary of employee ownership. [2]

In 2010, Marland Mold were acquired by Curtil. [17] In 2017, the Pittsfield plant was shut. [18]

Semco

In the 1980s, Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler, converted his family firm, a light manufacturing concern called Semco, and transformed it into a strictly democratic establishment where managers were interviewed and then elected by workers. All managerial decisions were subject to democratic review, debate and vote, with the full participation of all workers. This radical approach to management got him and the company a great deal of attention. Semler argued that handing the company over to the workers was the only way to free time for himself to go build up the customer, government and other relationships required to make the company grow. By giving up the fight to hold any control of internals, Semler was able to focus on marketing, positioning, and offer his advice (as a paid, elected spokesman, though his position as major shareholder was not so negotiable) as if he were, effectively, an outside management consultant hired by the company. Decentralization of management functions, he claimed, gave him a combination of insider information and outsider credibility, plus the legitimacy of truly speaking for his workers in the same sense as an elected political leader. [19]

Other companies

Research on workplace democracy

Public opinion

A 2023 study found that Americans generally support workplace democracy, even in survey experiments where respondents are exposed to question framings that emphasize the costs of workplace democracy. [20]

Management science studies

There are many management science papers on the application of democratic structuring to the workplace, and its benefits.

Benefits are often contrasted to simple command hierarchy arrangements in which "the boss" can hire anyone and fire anyone, and takes absolute and total responsibility for their own well-being and also all that occurs "under" them. The command hierarchy is a preferred management style followed in many companies for its simplicity, speed and low process overheads.

London Business School chief, Nigel Nicholson, in his 1998 Harvard Business Review paper: "How Hardwired is Human Behavior?" suggested that human nature was just as likely to cause problems in the workplace as in larger social and political settings, and that similar methods were required to deal with stressful situations and difficult problems. He held up the workplace democracy model advanced by Ricardo Semler as the "only" one that actually took cognizance of human foibles. [21]

Effects on productivity

A meta-analysis of 43 studies on worker participation found there was no negative correlation between workplace democracy and higher efficiency and productivity. [22] A report looking at research on democratic workplaces in the USA, Europe and Latin America found workplace democracy had staff working 'better and smarter' with production organized more efficiently. They were also able to organize more efficiently on a larger scale and in more capital-intensive industries than hierarchical workplaces. [23] A 1987 study of democratic workplaces in Italy, the UK and France found that workplace democracy has a positive relationship with productivity and that democratic firms do not get less productive as they get larger. [24] A report on democratic workplaces in the USA found that they can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses and have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation. [25] A 1995 study of workplace democracy in the timber industry in the Northwest United States found that productivity increased by 6 to 14% with workplace democracy. [26] A 2006 meta-study on workplace democracy found that it can 'equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership' and 'enrich local social capital.' [27] Another 2006 study reviewing existing evidence found that contrary to the popular idea that worker participation would decrease productivity, it actually increases it. [28] A 1985 study in France that the typical increase to productivity from workplace democracy was about 5%. [29] Another 2022 study using data from France found workplace democracy increases economic performance in knowledge-heavy sectors. [30]

However, a 1986 study of plywood companies in the USA found democratic workplaces lost productivity due to them hiring more workers who were not given equal democratic rights compared to original workers. [31] Another study looking at evidence of construction companies in the 1980s indicated that democratic workplaces had equal or lower productivity compared to other workplaces. [32]

Effects on business longevity

According to an analysis, businesses with democratic workplaces in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec in the 2000s were almost half as likely as businesses with hierarchical workplaces to fail in ten years. [33] According to an analysis of all businesses in Uruguay between 1997 - 2009, businesses with democratic workplaces have a 29% smaller chance of closure than other firms. [34] In Italy, businesses with democratic workplaces that have been created by workers buying a business when it's facing a closure or put up to sale have a 3 year survival rate of 87%, compared to 48% of all Italian businesses. [35] In 2005, 1% of German businesses failed but the statistic for businesses with democratic workplaces was less than 0.1%. [33] A 2012 study of Spanish and French businesses with democratic workplaces found that they “have been more resilient than conventional enterprises during the economic crisis." [33] In France, the three year survival rate of businesses with democratic workplaces is 80%-90%, compared to the 66% overall survival rate for all businesses. [36] During the 2008 economic crisis, the number of workers in businesses with democratic workplaces in France increased by 4.2%, while employment in other businesses decreased by 0.7%. [37]

Effects on workers

A 2018 study from South Korea found that workers had higher motivation in democratic workplaces. [38] A 2014 study from Italy found that democratic workplaces were the only kind of workplace which increased trust between workers. [39] A 2013 study from the United States found that democratic workplaces in the healthcare industry had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction. [40] A 2011 study in France found that democratic workplaces “had a positive effect on workers’ job satisfaction.” [41] A 2019 meta-study indicates that “the impact [of democratic workplaces] on the happiness workers is generally positive”. [42] A 1995 study from the United States indicates that “employees who embrace an increased influence and participation in workplace decisions also reported greater job satisfaction”. [43] A 2008 study found mixed results for "spillover" effects on workers, where working in a democratic workplace doesn't increase the odds of voting but slightly increases the odds of community engagement. [44] A 1986 study of plywood companies in the USA found that democratic workplaces tended to over-report accidents whilst conventional capitalist ones would under-report them. Contrary to theoretical expectations of democratic workplaces, they were not safer for workers than conventional capitalist workplaces. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cooperative</span> Autonomous association of persons or organizations

A cooperative is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Cooperatives are democratically controlled by their members, with each member having one vote in electing the board of directors. Cooperatives may include:

Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any other entity, pays the other, the employee, in return for carrying out assigned work. Employees work in return for wages, which can be paid on the basis of an hourly rate, by piecework or an annual salary, depending on the type of work an employee does, the prevailing conditions of the sector and the bargaining power between the parties. Employees in some sectors may receive gratuities, bonus payments or stock options. In some types of employment, employees may receive benefits in addition to payment. Benefits may include health insurance, housing, disability insurance. Employment is typically governed by employment laws, organisation or legal contracts.

Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production process, i.e. output per unit of input, typically over a specific period of time. The most common example is the (aggregate) labour productivity measure, one example of which is GDP per worker. There are many different definitions of productivity and the choice among them depends on the purpose of the productivity measurement and data availability. The key source of difference between various productivity measures is also usually related to how the outputs and the inputs are aggregated to obtain such a ratio-type measure of productivity.

A works council is a shop-floor organization representing workers that functions as a local/firm-level complement to trade unions but is independent of these at least in some countries. Works councils exist with different names in a variety of related forms in a number of European countries, including Great Britain ; Germany and Austria (Betriebsrat); Luxembourg ; the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium (ondernemingsraad); Italy ; France ; Wallonia in Belgium, Spain and Denmark.

In corporate governance, codetermination is a practice where workers of an enterprise have the right to vote for representatives on the board of directors in a company. It also refers to staff having binding rights in work councils on issues in their workplace. The first laws requiring worker voting rights include the Oxford University Act 1854 and the Port of London Act 1908 in the United Kingdom, the Act on Manufacturing Companies of 1919 in Massachusetts in the United States, and the Supervisory Board Act 1922 in Germany, which codified collective agreement from 1918.

Ricardo Semler is the CEO and majority owner of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering. Under his ownership, revenue has grown from 4 million US dollars in 1982 to 212 million US dollars in 2003 and his business management policies have attracted widespread interest around the world. Time featured him in its Global 100 young leaders profile series published in 1994 while the World Economic Forum also nominated him. The Wall Street JournalAmerica Economia, The Wall Street Journal's Latin American magazine, named him Latin American Businessman of the Year in 1990 and he was named Brazilian Businessman in the year 1990 and 1992. Virando a Própria Mesa, his first book, became the best-selling non-fiction book in the history of Brazil. He has since written two books in English on the transformation of Semco and workplace re-engineering: Maverick, an English version of "Turning Your Own Table" published in 1993 and an international bestseller, and The Seven-Day Weekend in 2003.

A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by every worker-owner who each have one vote.

Personnel economics has been defined as "the application of economic and mathematical approaches and econometric and statistical methods to traditional questions in human resources management". It is an area of applied micro labor economics, but there are a few key distinctions. One distinction, not always clearcut, is that studies in personnel economics deal with the personnel management within firms, and thus internal labor markets, while those in labor economics deal with labor markets as such, whether external or internal. In addition, personnel economics deals with issues related to both managerial-supervisory and non-supervisory workers.

Participatory management is the practice of empowering members of a group, such as employees of a company or citizens of a community, to participate in organizational decision making. It is used as an alternative to traditional vertical management structures, which has shown to be less effective as participants are growing less interested in their leader's expectations due to a lack of recognition of the participant's effort or opinion.

Workplace wellness, also known as corporate wellbeing outside the United States, is a broad term used to describe activities, programs, and/or organizational policies designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace. This often involves health education, medical screenings, weight management programs, and onsite fitness programs or facilities. It can also include flex-time for exercise, providing onsite kitchen and eating areas, offering healthy food options in vending machines, holding "walk and talk" meetings, and offering financial and other incentives for participation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Co-operative economics</span> Study of autonomous associations interactions with production and distribution

Cooperative economics is a field of economics that incorporates cooperative studies and political economy toward the study and management of cooperatives.

Participative decision-making (PDM) is the extent to which employers allow or encourage employees to share or participate in organizational decision-making. According to Cotton et al., the format of PDM could be formal or informal. In addition, the degree of participation could range from zero to 100% in different participative management (PM) stages.

Economics of participation is an umbrella term spanning the economic analysis of worker cooperatives, labor-managed firms, profit sharing, gain sharing, employee ownership, employee stock ownership plans, works councils, codetermination, and other mechanisms which employees use to participate in their firm's decision making and financial results.

Workplace health promotion is the combined efforts of employers, employees, and society to improve the mental and physical health and well-being of people at work. The term workplace health promotion denotes a comprehensive analysis and design of human and organizational work levels with the strategic aim of developing and improving health resources in an enterprise. The World Health Organization has prioritized the workplace as a setting for health promotion because of the large potential audience and influence on all spheres of a person's life. The Luxembourg Declaration provides that health and well-being of employees at work can be achieved through a combination of:

Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the decision-making process, in organizations employing industrial democracy they also have the final decisive power.

Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap.

Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed economy systems.

Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian and market socialists as well as anarchists and communists.

Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it. Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy, and can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity. Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product, produced by the means of production, or the wealth that comes from it, to society at large or the workers themselves. Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society. However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.

Harwood research refers to research in organizational psychology that took place at Harwood Manufacturing, a Virginia-based textiles manufacturer, over the course of four decades in the early to mid-Twentieth Century.

References

  1. Rayasam, Renuka (24 April 2008). "Why Workplace Democracy Can Be Good Business". U.S. News & World Report . Retrieved 2021-06-24.
  2. 1 2 "The Case of Marland Mold". Center for Learning in Action. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
  3. Lewin, Arie Y.; Stephens, Carroll U. (1994). "CEO Attitudes as Determinants of Organization Design: An Integrated Model". Organization Studies. 15 (2): 183–212. doi:10.1177/017084069401500202. S2CID   144237046.
  4. Bachrach, P. (1967). The theory of democratic elitism: a critique. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. ISBN   978-0-316-07485-8.
  5. Zirakzabeh, Cyrus Ernesto (1990). "Theorizing about Workplace Democracy Robert Dahl and the Cooperatives of Mondragón". Journal of Theoretical Politics. 2: 109–126. doi:10.1177/0951692890002001005. S2CID   145142694.
  6. Frega, Roberto (2020-06-01). "Against Analogy". Democratic Theory. 7 (1): 1–26. doi:10.3167/dt.2020.070102. ISSN   2332-8894. S2CID   235862817. but contrast Vrousalis, Nicholas (2019-10-01). "Workplace Democracy Entails Economic Democracy". Journal of Social Philosophy. 50 (1): 526–42. doi:10.1111/josp.12275. hdl: 1887/86062 . S2CID   150787360.
  7. Northouse, P. G. (2015). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice (3rd ed). Kalamazoo, MI: SAGE Publications. 978-1-4833-1276-7
  8. 1 2 G. William Domhoff. "Who Rules America: The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions in the U.S". Whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
  9. "The Forgotten Democratic Socialist Republic of Georgia".
  10. "ACADEMIC: Politics & International Relations: Books: Bloomsbury Publishing (UK)".
  11. The Origins and Myths of the Swedish Model of Workplace Democracy (PDF)
  12. Onis, Juan de (1970-09-06). "Allende, Chilean Marxist, Wins Vote for Presidency". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  13. "What is Workplace Democracy?".
  14. "Law on Industrial Enterprises Owned by the Whole People -".
  15. "Staff and Workers' Representative Congress" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-06-13. Retrieved 2023-09-22.
  16. Wolff, Richard (24 June 2012). Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way. The Guardian. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
  17. "Marland Mold, Inc,: Private Company Information". Bloomberg News . Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  18. "French firm to close Curtil Marland Mold in Pittsfield; 40 positions lost". 16 February 2017. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  19. "Ricardo Semler: The radical boss who proved that workplace democracy works | Mallen Baker's Respectful Business Blog". Mallenbaker.net. 2017-01-03. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
  20. Mazumder, Soumyajit; Yan, Alan N. (2023). "What Do Americans Want from (Private) Government? Experimental Evidence Demonstrates that Americans Want Workplace Democracy". American Political Science Review: 1–17. doi: 10.1017/S0003055423000667 . ISSN   0003-0554.
  21. Nicholson, Nigel (July 1998). "How Hardwired is Human Behavior?". Harvard Business Review. 76 (4): 134–147. PMID   10181587.
  22. Doucouliagos, Chris (October 1995). "Worker Participation and Productivity in Labor-Managed and Participatory Capitalist Firms: A Meta-Analysis" (PDF). Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 49: 58–77. doi:10.1177/001979399504900104. S2CID   58906938 via United Diversity.
  23. Pérotin, Virginie. "What do we really know about worker co-operatives?" (PDF). Retrieved 2023-09-22.
  24. Estrin, Saul; Jones, Derek C; Svejnar, Jan (1987-03-01). "The productivity effects of worker participation: Producer cooperatives in western economies". Journal of Comparative Economics. 11 (1): 40–61. doi:10.1016/0147-5967(87)90040-0. ISSN   0147-5967.
  25. Abell, Hilary (June 2014). "WORKER COOPERATIVES: PATHWAYS TO SCALE" (PDF). The Democracy Collaborative.
  26. "Participation and Productivity: A Comparison of Worker Cooperatives and Conventional Firms in the Plywood Industry" (PDF). Brookings Papers: Microeconomics 1995.
  27. Logue, John; Yates, Jacquelyn S. (2006-11-01). "Cooperatives, Worker-Owned Enterprises, Productivity and the International Labor Organization". Economic and Industrial Democracy. 27 (4): 686–690. doi:10.1177/0143831X06069019. ISSN   0143-831X. S2CID   153938396.
  28. Levin, Henry M. (2006-03-01). "Worker Democracy and Worker Productivity". Social Justice Research. 19 (1): 109–121. doi:10.1007/s11211-006-0002-z. ISSN   1573-6725. S2CID   19971458.
  29. Defourney, Jacques; Estrin, Saul; Jones, Derek C. (1985-06-01). "The effects of workers' participation on enterprise performance: Empirical evidence from French cooperatives". International Journal of Industrial Organization. 3 (2): 197–217. doi:10.1016/0167-7187(85)90004-9. ISSN   0167-7187.
  30. Young-Hyman, Trevor; Magne, Nathalie; Kruse, Douglas (July 2023). "A Real Utopia Under What Conditions? The Economic and Social Benefits of Workplace Democracy in Knowledge-Intensive Industries". Organization Science. 34 (4): 1353–1382. doi:10.1287/orsc.2022.1622. ISSN   1047-7039.
  31. 1 2 Grunberg, Leon (1986-01-01). "Safety, Productivity and the Social Relations in Production: An Empirical Study of Worker Cooperatives". International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. 6 (4): 87–102. doi:10.1108/eb013025. ISSN   0144-333X.
  32. Jones, Derek C. (2007-01-01), Novkovic, Sonja; Sena, Vania (eds.), "The Productive Efficiency of Italian Producer Cooperatives: Evidence from Conventional and Cooperative Firms", Cooperative Firms in Global Markets, Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory & Labor-Managed Firms, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10, pp. 3–28, doi:10.1016/S0885-3339(06)10001-0, ISBN   978-0-7623-1389-1 , retrieved 2024-02-25
  33. 1 2 3 "Worker Cooperatives Performance and Success Factors". Co-opLaw.org. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  34. Burdín, Gabriel (January 2014). "Are Worker-Managed Firms More Likely to Fail Than Conventional Enterprises? Evidence from Uruguay". ILR Review. 67 (1): 202–238. doi:10.1177/001979391406700108. ISSN   0019-7939. S2CID   154970350.
  35. "The path to worker buyouts: Does the UK need its own 'Marcora Law'?". Co-op News . 7 September 2015.
  36. Olsen, E.K. (2013-01-01). "The relative survival of worker cooperatives and barriers to their creation". Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms. 14: 83–107. doi:10.1108/S0885-3339(2013)0000014005. ISBN   978-1-78190-750-4.
  37. "The resilience of the cooperative model". Issuu. 14 December 2014. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  38. Park, Rhokeun (2018-01-29). "Responses to job demands: moderating role of worker cooperatives". Employee Relations. 40 (2): 346–361. doi:10.1108/ER-06-2017-0137.
  39. Sabatini, Fabio; Modena, Francesca; Tortia, Ermanno (2014). "Do cooperative enterprises create social trust?". Small Business Economics. 42 (3): 621–641. doi:10.1007/s11187-013-9494-8. hdl: 10419/142639 . S2CID   16528387.
  40. Berry, D.P. (2013-01-01). "Effects of cooperative membership and participation in decision making on job satisfaction of home health aides". Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms. 14: 3–25. doi:10.1108/S0885-3339(2013)0000014002. ISBN   978-1-78190-750-4.
  41. Castel, Davy; Lemoine, Claude; Durand-Delvigne, Annick (2011-11-01). "Working in Cooperatives and Social Economy: Effects on Job Satisfaction and the Meaning of Work". Perspectives Interdisciplinaires Sur le Travail et la Santé (13–2). doi: 10.4000/pistes.2635 . ISSN   1481-9384.
  42. "Happiness theory and worker cooperatives: A critique of the alignment thesis | Request PDF". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2020-05-07.
  43. Murray, Anthony (20 March 2013). "Co-operatives make for a happy place to work". Co-op News .
  44. "APA PsycNet". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2024-02-25.