(1996). Socialism after communism: Liberalism? The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 538-544.

Private governance raises important questions about democratic representation. Rule making is rarely based on electoral authorisation by those in whose name rules are made—typically a requirement for democratic legitimacy. This requires revisiting the role of representation in input legitimacy in transnational governance, which remains underdeveloped. Focussing on private labour governance, we contrast two approaches to the transnational representation of worker interests in global supply chains: non-governmental organisations providing representative claims versus trade unions providing representative structures. Studying the Bangladesh Accord for (...) Fire and Building Safety, we examine their interaction along three dimensions of democratic representation: 1) creating presence, 2) authorisation, and 3) accountability to affected constituents. We develop a framework that explains when representative claims and structures become complementary but also how the politics of input legitimacy shapewhoseinterests get represented. We conclude by deriving theoretical and normative implications for transnational representation and input legitimacy in global governance. (shrink)

Despite the amount of theorization on the forms and effects of participation, relatively little research directly examines what the concept of workplace participation entails in the minds of employees, and whether employees across cultures think positively when the concept of participation is activated in their mental representation. Three studies investigated the perceptions and preferences of full-time employees from the United States and China, cultures that might be expected to differ in their societal participation norm. Using a free association test and (...) text analyses, Study 1 demonstrated that Chinese and American employees differed in their construal of workplace participation, yet both culture groups associated positive valence to the concept of participation. Study 2 showed that employees’ preference for workplace participation is positively related to their perceptions of its outcomes on productivity, job satisfaction, and workplace conflict. Study 3 had employees interact with either a prototypically high or low participation work environment and tested whether clear cultural contrasts might occur. American employees expressed unambiguous endorsement and predicted positive outcomes of a high participation workplace, whereas Chinese employees expressed slightly higher endorsement to a low participation work environment and associated it with higher productivity. This research provides insights on how workplace participation is construed by employees from different cultures, especially from cultures where democratic participation is not the normative default. Different perspectives on workplace participation across cultures may inform practitioners of the goals and approaches when shaping a more participatory workplace and a more democratic society. (shrink)

This article traces the emergence of the term welfare state in British political discourse and describes competing efforts to define its meaning. It presents a genealogy of the concept's emergence and its subsequent integration into various political scripts, tracing the struggles that sought to name, define, and narrate what welfare state would be taken to mean. It shows that the concept emerged only after the core programmes to which it referred had already been enacted into law and that the referents (...) and meaning of the concept were never generally agreed upon – not even at the moment of its formation in the late 1940s. During the 1950s, the welfare state concept was being framed in three distinct senses: the welfare state as a set of social security programmes; the welfare state as a socio-economic system; and the welfare state as a new kind of state. Each of these usages was deployed by opposing political actors – though with different scope, meaning, value, and implication. The article argues that the welfare state concept did not operate as a representation reflecting a separate, already-constituted reality. Rather, the use of the concept in the political and economic arguments of the period – and in later disputes about the nature of the Labour government's post-war achievements – was always thoroughly rhetorical and constitutive, its users aiming to shape the transformations and outcomes that they claimed merely to describe. (shrink)

The history of democracy is increasingly understood as not only the recovery of its practices and conceptualisations but also of its signifiers. In order to grasp the transition of the word “democracy” from a reviled to a revered term in Britain, this article focuses on socialist uses of the democratic idiom during the 1880s. Across a study of socialist publications, speeches and newspapers, three different uses of “democracy” emerge. First, the word could mean a political ideal to be materialised, through (...) universal suffrage but more widely by means of popular and direct control of Parliament. Second, the term was seen as a dangerous illusion that cast a veil over capitalist oppression. Third, “democracy” could denote a political reality already present in Britain, which needed to be reflected in the economic sphere. Although sometimes diverging, these uses can be linked to three important socialist organisations: the Social Democratic Federation (S.D.F.), the Socialist League (S.L.) and the Fabian Society (F.S.). Recovering these distinctive uses illuminates the relationship between “democracy” and “socialism” and offers a key with which to understand our current political landscape. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The notion of “democracy” has become a much-debated concept in scholarship on business ethics, management, and organization studies. The strategy of this paper is to distinguish between a principle of organization that fosters participation (type I democracy) and a principle of legitimation that draws on consent (type II democracy). Based on this distinction, we highlight conceptual shortcomings of the literature on stakeholder democracy. We demonstrate that parts of the literature tend to confound ends with means. Many approaches employ type I (...) democracy notions of participation and often take for granted that this also improves type II democratic legitimation. We hold this to be a mistake. We provide examples of the ambiguity of organizational procedures and show that under some circumstances a decrease in the degree of participation may actually increase legitimation because a governance structure that results in higher productivity can provide higher benefits for all parties involved, serve their interests and therefore meet their agreement. Less type I democracy may mean more type II democracy. We believe this to be an important insight for judging (and further improving) the legitimacy of both capitalistic firms and competitive markets. (shrink)

This paper uses the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) statement of union values as its point of departure to explore the purpose and role of trade union values. Specifically, the paper questions whether the role of values is purely symbolic, serving as a guide to unions, or whether values have a broader role. Furthermore, the paper questions the scope of the ACTU statement, which is currently based on the public work of unions. In conducting this analysis, union values are (...) compared to the broader human values; moreover, the scope of the document is assessed against the historic activity and behaviour of unions as represented in extant union theory. Subsequently, the paper uses the emerging role of union values to critique the ACTU statement, concluding that while this statement makes a valuable contribution to union practice and debate, it can be extended to encompass other, more private areas of union activity. (shrink)

Human Resources Practices and unions coexist in some organisations to manage the employment relationships of the workers. In this study, we analyse how the presence/absence of unions and HRPs are combined in private European organisations, and which of these combinations are related to higher levels of wellbeing and the quality of labor relations. Data come from 24,503 workers of private organisations, obtained from the Sixth European Working Conditions Survey. Latent profiles analysis and different analyses of the variance suggested four different (...) profiles. The profile with the greatest presence of HRPs and union presence is related to the highest levels of employees' wellbeing and quality of labor relations in organisations, whereas those organisations with a low level of union presence or HRPs reached the worst levels in employees' wellbeing and quality of labor relations indicators. The results and their practical implications are discussed. (shrink)