A Socio-Political Theory of Workplace Democracy: Class Conflict, Constituent Reactions and Organizational Outcomes at a Gainsharing Facility

Abstract

This article examines the role of class conflict and group processes during the transitional stage of an organization experimenting with a high involvement management system and a group-based bonus. Review articles on workplace democracy often report ambiguous empirical findings. This is because much of the writing about participatory management is narrowly grounded in either human relations or human resource management theory. This study uses organization theory literature on class conflict and the political science literature on change from authoritarian rule to democracy to develop grounded theory based on events and outcomes at a nonunion, privately-owned manufacturing facility, during four years of operation under a Scanlon-type gainsharing system. Since organizations are governance systems, gainsharing can be conceptualized as a middle-range democracy. As demonstrated by this study, both management and labor, in some ways, benefitted from gainsharing. Although democratization was extremely worthwhile, it did not disperse class distinctions and the concentration of capital.

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