Smith defines the business enterprise primarily as the endeavor of an individual who remains fully embedded in the broader society and subject to its moral demands. For him, the conceptions of the local community and its normative framework, of the enterprise, and of the individuals within it need to be aligned with each other and developed together. Over time, four processes have, however, led to a widening gap between the business world and the local community. These are the dissemination of (...) the corporate model, the transformation of the entrepreneurial role toward an agency role, changes in the ownership structure, and changes in the relation to the local community. This article presents Smith’s integrative conception of business and its contributions to the development of integrative theories of organizations and of business–society relations in the twenty-first century. Among others, it discusses the necessity to develop a normative-relational dimension of organizations that addresses the relations between the organization, its members, and the normative framework of the local community. This integrative approach of business–society relations challenges current business ethics research which often suggests that solutions to the current scandals lie either within the framework, the organization, or the individuals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, (...) we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon. (shrink)

Recently, calls have grown louder for more stakeholder democracy that is, letting stakeholders participate in the process of organizing, decision‐making, and governance in corporations, especially in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Despite the relevance of the subject, the impact of customer involvement in CSR on their company‐related attitudes and behaviors still represents a major research void. The paper at hand develops a conceptual framework of consumer involvement in CSR based on the existing literature, theories of stakeholder democracy, (...) and organizational boundaries as well as drawing from the qualitative focus group interviews (N = 24). The framework is tested on a large scale, two‐time point field‐experimental study (N = 3,397). More specifically, consumer reactions to three degrees of customer involvement (i.e., information, feedback, and dialogue) are tested in two different CSR domains (i.e., company‐internal business process vs. company‐external philanthropic CSR). Results indicate that the customer involvement in CSR has a more beneficial effect in terms of strengthening customer outcomes in CSR domains that directly affect external stakeholders of the company (i.e., philanthropic CSR) than in domains that mainly concern company‐internal stakeholders (i.e., business process CSR). (shrink)

This research aims to study possible effects or impacts of COVID-19 in the context of a democratic organizational system analyzing how COVID-19 has influenced employees’ perception of their participation in decision-making and its impact on some psychological outcomes and emotions. COVID-19 has accelerated the process of implementation of new frameworks at work that have generated the modification of culture and employee management practices. Our hypothesis are, on the one hand, that COVID-19 has generated changes in participation structures and internal communication (...) mechanisms, having to make modifications not to deteriorate the perception of employees about their participation in decision making. On the other hand, COVID-19 has generated changes in the psychological outcomes and emotions of the employees. In the study, we analyze a cooperative belonging to the MONDRAGON cooperative group, where participation in decision-making and ownership is in its DNA. Through qualitative and quantitative methodologies, involving 42 employees, we investigate firstly, how COVID-19 has affected perceptions about participation in decision-making analyzing what role has played internal communication in these perceptions. Secondly, we investigate how COVID-19 has affected psychological outcomes and emotions. In this case, the perceptions arising from participation in decision-making focus on the assessment that participators make of the governance channels and the day-to-day meetings. Therefore, their appropriateness seems to be a key factor in the perception of participation in the COVID-19 era. Differences have been detected between the perceptions of blue and white collar employees. Such differences have also been founded in the psychological outcomes and emotions. Although this is a single case study, the analysis carried out provides elements of reflection to modify and restructure the decision-making and participation mechanisms, adapting them to the needs of blue and white collar employees in order to “guarantee” the expected outcomes. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

There is a long-standing and growing interest in democratizing labor unions. Union democracy is important for many reasons, including fostering greater member voice in the workplace and society, improving the internal effectiveness of unions, building members’ capacities to engage in democracy in other contexts, and helping foster union renewal. Despite these benefits, democracy in unions as practiced today is characterized by several problems. In this paper, I analyze several of the remedies to increase union democracy proposed to date by scholars (...) and practitioners, finding that despite their potential positive impacts, many of them may have inherent limitations. I then argue that sortition—the use of lotteries in selecting leaders—shows potential in helping address many of the problems facing union democracy and overcoming the limitations of recent remedies. An important democratic tool in Ancient Athens and other city-states, sortition has a long history in political theory and practice, yet application to unions is in its infancy. I conclude by developing and evaluating several ways in which sortition could be used as a tool in union governance structures, and by discussing the implications of my theorizing for ongoing work on union democracy and union renewal. (shrink)

This paper introduces a refined approach to conceptualising the commons in order to shed new light on cooperative practices. Specifically, it proposes the novel concept of Common-Property Assets. CPAs are exclusively human-made resources owned under common-property ownership regimes. Our CPA model combines quantity and quality. While these two dimensions are largely pre-existing in the conventional case of natural common-pool resources, they directly depend on members’ collective action in CPAs. We apply this theoretical framework to farm machinery sharing agreements—a widespread grassroots (...) cooperative phenomenon in agriculture—using a systematic literature review to generalise the findings from a sample of 54 studies published from 1950 to 2018. Our findings show that in successful CPAs, members endorse and do not deviate from a quantity-quality equilibrium that is collectively agreed upon. Despite the existence of thresholds for both quantity and quality due to membership heterogeneity, qualitative changes in respect of the common good are possible in CPAs that promote democratic practices. Our study has potentially strong implications for developing ethics in cooperatives and the sustainable development of communities worldwide. (shrink)

The scientific literature has shown Mondragon Corporation, with 65 years of history, as a clear example that cooperativism can be highly competitive in the capitalist market while being highly egalitarian and democratic. This cooperative group has focused on its corporate values of cooperation, participation, social responsibility, and innovation. Previous scientific research reports its enormous transformative and emancipatory potential. However, studies on the effects of various types of worker participation on competitiveness and workers’ psychological wellbeing in this cooperative group exist to (...) a lesser extent. Specifically, one aspect that needs further empirical research and that represents a competitive advantage for Mondragon is the degree of commitment and emotional attachment that can be observed in the people who work there. For this reason, this article aims to identify key elements of the democratic participation of workers in these cooperatives that relate to the development of organizational commitment. Based on a communicative and qualitative approach, data collection included 29 interviews to different profiles of workers from eight different cooperatives of the Corporation. Through this research methodology, the participants interpret their reality through egalitarian and intersubjective dialogue because their voices are considered essential to measure the social impact. This study found three different ways in which the democratic participation of worker-members in management and ownership contributes to developing affective organizational commitment among those working in Mondragon cooperatives, generating positive psychological and economic outcomes for both workers and cooperatives. (shrink)

This review study provides an opportunity to look at the level of organizational democracy that a large sample of private- and public-sector employees in an emerging market perceive. The focused systematic review includes empirical studies examining employees' level of OD and associated work and organizational psychological variables, using the Organizational Democracy Scale in Turkey. This paper includes studies published between January 2014 and April 2021 in the Google Academic, Dergipark, and Ulakbim databases and on the Turkish National Thesis Center website. (...) From a total of 1,778 records, 37 empirical studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included. Of these studies, 67.6% are published articles and manuscripts, 24% are unpublished dissertations, and 43.2% of the studies took place in the public sector. The results suggest that the level of employees' perceived OD was slightly above the medium level, and the scores of the private-sector employees are higher than those of the public employees. Further, empirical associations between OD and 21 different outcome variables are reported and discussed. To varying extents, significant positive correlations were found between the level of employees' perceived OD and positive organizational variables, such as organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, psychological capital, and job satisfaction. On the other hand, negative significant relationships occurred between OD and negatively evaluated organizational variables, such as job stress and organizational depression. The results of this study support the importance of organizational democracy as a management approach. (shrink)

To shield stakeholders from exploitation, society increasingly expects organizations to engage with stakeholders. While exploitation of stakeholders is of great concern, economic literature points to the costly nature of stakeholder engagement vis-à-vis alternative mechanisms that protect stakeholders, such as competitive markets. When the costs of stakeholder engagement outweigh the benefits, why would organizations engage with stakeholders? Through an analysis of the cooperative enterprise and a comparison with its capitalist counterpart, we theorize two additional reasons why stakeholder engagement is beneficial. First, (...) we explain how stakeholder engagement facilitates long-term organizational resilience and protection of stakeholders in times of crisis, and second, we show how engagement is a decisive ingredient in answering non-economic value requirements of stakeholders. To conclude, we contribute to the broader stakeholder engagement and cooperative literature by stressing that engagement practices, and particularly democratic governance arrangements, are subject to design principles that sometimes favor stakeholders in capitalist firms. (shrink)

We draw on Alasdair MacIntyre's virtues, practices, and institutions schema to argue that employee participation in governance practices can play an important role in developing virtue. Whereas MacIntyre's schema has been most widely employed to understand how productive practices can cultivate virtue, we focus instead on the way that meaningful deliberation about the common good can provide experiences requiring employees to exercise the virtues. We then apply this theoretical framework to an analysis of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Our analysis emphasizes (...) the importance of participatory governance over employee ownership. Based on this analysis, we draw several implications for increasing participatory governance in a way that will prevent shareholder maximization from crowding out virtue, even in corporate contexts where productive activity itself does not provide a meaningful, virtue-instilling experience. (shrink)