The Cooperative Workplace: Potentials and Dilemmas of Organisational Democracy and Participation (American Sociological Association Rose Monographs)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: New Ed, 4/17/2009
EAN 9780521379427, ISBN10: 0521379423
Paperback, 232 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Over the last several years worker cooperatives of many kinds have sprung up all around the world. As a result, industrial relations in the workplace have changed dramatically as workers have come to own and run their own enterprises. This book provides evidence on how these new enterprises are functioning today. Using evidence from their extensive research in various such firms, the authors identify the consequences for both the organisation and the workers when those who do the work also manage. Setting forth an original theory of democratic organisations, they reveal the very real dilemmas and trade-offs that democratic work organisations face, as well as the specific conditions in which workplace democracy flourishes or declines.
Introduction
Part I. Origins and Types of Alternative Organizations
1. Cooperatives in the late twentieth-century
the democratic impulse and the challenge of oligarchy
2. The organizations studied, the methods used
Part II. A Theory of Democratic organization
3. The collectivist organization
an alternative to bureaucratic models
4. Internal conditions that facilitate collectivist-democratic organizations
5. External conditions that facilitate collectivist-democratic organizations
Part III. The Significance of Democratic Organizations
6. Democracy and individual satisfaction
7. The future of cooperation
8. Overview and conclusions
Notes
References
Index.