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This study reviewed a body of empirical research on Carole Pateman's democratic spillover thesis, which argues that democratic participation in the workplace spill over into political participation. The review revealed significant variance in defining and measuring of workplace democracy and participation among quantitative empirical studies on the spillover thesis. The review also discovered that majority of the reviewed studies omitted higher level participation as a predictor, and political efficacy, which is a mediating mechanism between workplace participation and political behaviors, in testing the hypotheses. Suggestions for future research and limitations are discussed.

This paper aims to explore the role of workplace democracy in generating psychological capital, which is an inevitable paradigm for the contemporary organizations. The study also provides a conceptual framework which connotes the nexus between the two constructs.

The study is qualitative in nature and uses content analysis to identify the determinants of workplace democracy and psychological capital. Furthermore, the study used SPSS macro, i.e. PROCESS, a computational tool for calculating inter-coder reliability by using KALPHA, i.e. Krippendorff’s alpha reliability estimate (Hayes, 2013; Krippendorff, 2011).

The present study adds to the literature by signaling the dire need for building democratic workplaces and offers significant insights for the management and human resource practitioners to cultivate workplace democracy to build their employees’ psychological strengths, which in turn will result in enhanced organizational outcomes.

The present study brings attention toward the necessity for a shift in the generic organizational strategies and instigate organizations to nurture a democratic setup for developing employees’ psychological capital.

This paper explores the relationship between workplace democracy, the improvement of internal communication and the implications for organizational transformation and competitive advantage. The internal communication function in a large South African organization was decentralized to cost center level, where communication champions were democratically elected. Survey research among two internal populations confirmed the importance of workplace democracy for the improvement of trust, information flow, face‐to‐face, and superior and subordinate communication. To a limited extent it also reduced fear to communicate. These results could theoretically be linked to an organization's ability to change, which would increase its competitive advantage.

The Mondragon cooperatives are the most thoroughly studied and well-known example of worker cooperatives in the world. Yet while there has been much discussion and wide recognition of the empirical growth of the Mondragon co-ops, there is substantial confusion about the lessons we can draw from this case in thinking about workplace democracy more broadly.

The normative and empirical literature on Mondragon is carefully analyzed to draw out the main implications from this case study for the broader issue of workplace democracy.

I contend that Mondragon teaches us two main lessons. First, that workplace democracy can indeed operate in a way that is economically sustainable and socially superior to conventional firms. Second, Mondragon sheds light on the question of whether co-ops are doomed to degenerate.

This paper advances our understanding and conceptualization of workplace democracy.

This paper provides practitioners with an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the world’s most successful cooperative network.

This paper provides insight into the practical feasibility and normative desirability of alternative organizations of workplaces in the form of worker cooperatives.

This paper will be of particular interest to scholars and activists interested in democratic alternatives to conventional hierarchical firms by illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of the Mondragon cooperatives and drawing out the lessons that this specific yet influential example has for issues of workplace democracy more broadly.

Political institutions and contemporary workplaces operate according to different rules. The seeming contradiction between these two spheres, one democratic and the other something else, presents an opportunity for productive speculation about the possibilities for reconciliation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for future research investigation of this perennial topic.

The discussion of whether the workplace can catch up with the democratic achievements of political life requires an understanding of the status quo, the prevailing frames or metaphors that govern our understanding of organizational life. Four metaphors are put forward to describe the prevailing spectrum of thought. In addition to metaphors, analogies are introduced as an interpretive tool to help guide the imaginative transition between political and workplace domains.

Democratic political cultures are supported by structures and institutions which encourage the expression of individual and collective voice. Workplaces, comprised of the same citizens who participate in the governance of communities, do not, with some important exceptions, offer the same opportunities for democratic participation. If a general analogy between political and workplace sphere is found persuasive, it should be possible to import and adapt democratic traditions from the former to the latter.

Discussions of workplace democracy often suffer from a certain naiveté, a bias against structure and toward informal consensus. Insofar as democratic workplaces are by definition smaller scale than political communities, this bias is defensible. This paper concludes however by asserting certain minimal “acid test” challenges to those who would promote the goal of workplace democracy.

Organizational democracy is the new model of organizational design for a Democratic Age, and out of this new model grows a freedom-centered and healthy climate. Democratic management is a key to greater organization success and a necessity to gain higher levels of performance and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy in an Iranian context.

Statistical population includes the employees of the Gas Company of Isfahan Province. For data analysis, 263 accurate completed questionnaires are used. Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate the relationship between the research variables.

The findings showed that some types of organizational culture (i.e. self-criticism, team, and participatory culture) (β=0.33); and some dimensions of organizational structure (i.e. decentralization, flat hierarchy, and less formalization) (β=0.55) as antecedent variables have a significant direct effect on organizational democracy. Also, organizational democracy has a significant direct effect on human resources outcomes consist of organizational commitment, self-efficacy, and improving work relationships (β=0.64); and organizational outcomes consist of organizational learning and organizational agility (β=0.96).

Despite years of encouragement from consultants and theorists, managers have generally shown little interest toward democratic process as a system of decision making and management in organizations. This study proposes a comprehensive model for identifying the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy. Most studies in this field are theoretical rather than empirical. But, in this research, the proposed relationships are examined empirically.

To examine how different types of ownership, including investor-owned, employee-owned, and mixed models, affect the dynamics of participatory practices in the workplace, and the broader social effects of these differences.

Brings together literature from democratic theory and empirical research in workplace participation and employee ownership. The first step is to articulate the range of democratic practices from nondemocratic to strongly democratic. The essay then discusses the different forms that participation can take and the threshold for what can be considered democratic participation. It then considers different models of ownership and the impact of ownership type on participatory practices.

It is found that investor-owned firms cannot be considered strongly democratic and that worker cooperatives are more likely to be strongly democratic and cannot fall below the threshold of weak democracy. However, strong democracy is not necessarily a feature of worker cooperatives.

Little work has been done to consider the way the type of ownership affects the kind or degree of democratic practices that may be present in an enterprise.

This study aims to examine the role of organisational democracy (OD) in facilitating the knowledge sharing (KS) process within companies, thus considering the effect of different OD principles.

The authors used data collected through a questionnaire on a sample of 254 employees at private universities and colleges to test the relationship between OD and KS. Data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique.

Overall, OD has a direct and significant effect on facilitating KS in organisations. Also, the results showed that there are different degrees and intensities among the individual principles (sub-concepts) of OD and KS.

The findings highlight the important role of democracy in an organisation to enhance the organisational climate and employees’ behaviours, thus leading to higher KS outcomes. Also, results, provide an opportunity for managers to consider enhancing democracy in an organisation for improving internal collaboration effectiveness in KS.

This paper sheds light and adds new knowledge to embryonic studies that are directed towards the integration of democracy within the main concept of knowledge management (KM). This emphasises the need to use and stimulate OD and its principles for improving the effectiveness of KM practices with specific attention to KS.

Today, there is the real possibility that self-management and workplace democracy will follow socialism into the dustbin of history. But the connection of self-management to socialism was misconceived from the beginning. Workplace democracy has its own roots in the historical struggle against slavery and against autocracy. The paper reviews the history of the theory of inalienable rights that applies not only against the self-sale contract and the political contract of subjection but also against of the self-rental or employment contract, today's contract of subjection for the workplace. The paper concludes with the current debate about corporate governance.

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.