Zum Hauptinhalt der Webseite
Madness As Usual

Democracy

  • Stefan Kühl
  • Thursday, 3. October 2024

Why Democracy Leads to More Power Struggles 

The demand for the democratization of business is intuitively plausible. While large parts of society are democratic, the economy, so the accusation runs, remains a democracy-free zone. For many observers, the fact that the citizens of a state are allowed to elect their government while the employees of a firm must simply put up with the bosses chosen by the management requires some justification.  

In the face of this lack of democracy, some demand that key business decisions must be taken by all employees and that employees must be able to elect their superiors and dismiss them should they underperform. 

The democratically run enterprise is an old idea. The fundamental idea of the cooperative movement was that, if a business could not be owned by its customers, it should at least be owned by its employees. The idea of the self-managed company, which became popular in many countries in the wake of the student protests of the late sixties and early seventies, is based on the notion that the owners of capital and the providers of labour power should be the same group of people. 

Today, however, most companies that are proud of their democratic principles, or enjoy the praise they receive for them, have little truck with the idea of creating an alternative to capitalism. The discourse of democratization common to consultants, managers, and entrepreneurs is rather a symptom of the ‘new spirit of capitalism’, as identified by the sociologists Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello. 

The speeches given by the chairs of executive boards are reminiscent of the rhetoric of the revolutionary liberation movements of the twentieth century. Many of the ‘modern’ tools used in human resources development were first developed in the student movement, and the aesthetics of many a campaign aimed at motivating employees would not look out of place in the propaganda of a Marxist political party. Despite all the times capitalism has been said to be singing its swansong, it has developed an impressive ability to seize the criticisms directed at it and turn them to its advantage. The general line is: ‘The new form of organization must be viable.’ 

If democracy is to be more than skin deep, more than window dressing, it must imply the renunciation of hierarchy. Of course, employees electing their managers would also create a hierarchy, but this would be a weak form of hierarchy, for the superiors would have to keep in mind the possibility that they could be dismissed by the workforce. This would mean, inevitably, much less willingness on the part of the hierarchs to push through their policies simply with reference to their authority. 

The idea is that the resulting gap can be filled by communication and trust, as these can compensate for the loss of managerial control. The importance of communication and trust within organizations should not be underestimated, but in fact the form of control that democratization makes particularly important is control through power. Because in discussions about democratization power is often equated with hierarchy, this may seem surprising. As hierarchy becomes less important, one would think, so the processes of power become less important.  Studies of democratic states, however, show us that the opposite effect occurs. Democratization leads not to a reduction but to an increase of power games within a state. Anyone who doubts this need only watch the popular television series House of Cards, whose depiction of these power games is only mildly fictionalized. 

Prof. Stefan Kühl

links in his observations the latest results from research with the current challenges of the corporate world.

Show LinkedIn® Profile

Kommentare (1)

  1. Markus Hänsel says:

    Dear S. Kühl
    Thank you for this text, what would be examples for studies of democratic states that show that democratization leads to an increase of power games, and what kind of idea of power is ment by that?
    Rergards, Markus Hänsel

    Gefällt 0 Personen

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *