Workplace Democracy—the recent debate

(Philosophy Compass, 2019)

Roberto Frega, Lisa Herzog, and Christian Neuhäuser

Abstract
The article reviews the recent debate about workplace democracy. It first presents and critically
discusses arguments in favor of democratizing the firm that are based on the analogy with states,
meaningful work, the avoidance of unjustified hierarchies, and beneficial effects on political
democracy. The second part presents and critically discusses arguments against workplace
democracy that are based on considerations of efficiency, the difficulties of a transition towards
democratic firms, and liberal commitments such as the rights of employees and owners to work
for or invest in non-democratic firms. The conclusion summarizes the debate and argues that
experiments with democratic workplaces as what Erik Olin Wright (2010) calls “real utopias”
could deliver new insights and thus move the discussion forward.

Keywords
Workplace democracy; meaningful work; employee rights; ownership; efficiency; liberalism; real
utopias

Introduction
At the most general level, the term “workplace democracy” describes systems for the exercise of
power by workers or their representatives. A broad variety of arguments have been brought
forward for granting self-management to workers, and an equally wide range of institutional
solutions have been proposed. The objectives pursued by means of workplace democracy are
broad as well: from the self-organization of work in the production unit to strategic decisions
concerning hiring policies, product development, or commitment to social and environmental
values (Weber, 1992). Organizational solutions to democratizing the workplace range from rather
bland organizational reforms of hierarchical structures (organizational participation) to delegation
systems based on workers’ representation, such as the German co-determination model,1 to more
involved forms of workers’ direct participation through works councils. Some argue that the
ownership of the firm by workers is a necessary requirement for workplace democracy, while
others hold that ownership and control can be separated. Yet others have contended that
workplace democracy and capitalism are incompatible, so that genuine workplace democracy
would require a more encompassing reform of the entire economic system.
In these different forms, ideas and projects for democratizing the workplace date back at
least to the first industrial revolution. We find them, for example, in early projects on industrial
cooperation (Pollard, 1971), as well as throughout the whole history of industrial relations.
Important parts of this history are the Yugoslavian works councils in the second half of the 20th
century (Széll, 1992) as well as numerous cooperatives, e.g., food cooperatives or cooperative
banks, that co-exist with capitalist firms in many countries. Experiments with democracy in the
workplace have also characterized many revolutionary experiences from the Paris Commune to
the political revolutions of the earlier twentieth century, where works councils were established as

1
This model includes both the right to form worker councils and the inclusion of worker
representatives on the boards of large companies (the majority lies with the side of capital,
however).
the only legitimate form of labor organization, and conceived sometimes as the basic units of the
political system (Ness & Azzellini, 2011).
These and other political experiences, often short lived, were accompanied by attempts at
theoretical articulation. Authors such as Robert Owen, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, G. D. H.
Cole, or John Dewey wrote about workplace democracy; the idea was debated in the circles of
utopian socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, and social liberals. The idea of worker democracy has also
been a long-lasting source of theoretical and political inspiration throughout the twentieth
century, often under the label of “industrial democracy” (Poole, 1982). Debates on workplace
democracy have spanned a variety of academic disciplines ranging from philosophy to
organization studies, sociology, economics, law, and political science. The concept has inevitably
been subjected to manifold interpretations and its exact meaning and the political visions that
come with it remain contested.
Having fallen into near oblivion in the late 1970s, particularly in philosophy, the idea of a
democratic organization of work has regained traction in recent decades. Sustained interest has
resurfaced in political philosophy, and a variety of arguments have been brought forward not
only to clarify the content of the concept but, moreover, to support or criticize the claim that the
democratic organization of work is justified. This article, which is divided into two parts, offers a
review of the major attempts at justifying this claim. Part I explores arguments in support of
workplace democracy, and Part II is devoted to arguments that reject the claim that the
workplace should be democratized. Part I discusses four arguments in support of workplace
democracy: (1) that workplaces should be democratized because they are relevantly similar to
political communities; (2) that democracy is required to render the work meaningful; (3) that
democracy is needed to avoid domination and achieve equality; and (4) that democratizing the
workplace has beneficial effects on political democracy. The counterarguments discussed in Part
II are based on concerns about (1) efficiency, (2) the feasibility of a transition to workplace
democracy, and (3) liberal commitments. In the conclusion, we summarize where the discussion
currently stands and call for a close collaboration with empirical researchers to move the debate
forward.

Part I. Arguments in support of workplace democracy

I.1 The state-firm analogy and parallel case arguments

Analogical arguments draw on accepted similarities to conclude that further similarity
exists (Bartha, 2010; Frega, 2019). If a normative requirement is already accepted as valid for an
institution, the argument by analogy enables its extension to other institutions, without having to
further justify on independent grounds why the application of that specific norm to that specific
institution is legitimate.
The best-known version of such an argument for workplace democracy—using the
analogy from the state to the firm—was offered by Robert Dahl over thirty years ago (Dahl, 1986
and elsewhere; see also, independently, McMahon, 1994). Inspired by his work, several authors
have recently proposed updated versions of analogy-based arguments in support of workplace
democracy (González-Ricoy, 2014b; Landemore and Ferreras, 2016), whereas others have taken
Dahl to task in an effort to reject analogy-based justifications of workplace democracy (Mayer,
2000, 2001a, 2001b; Arneson, 1993).
Dahl famously stated that “if democracy is justified in governing the state, then it must
also be justified in governing economic enterprises” (1986, 111, emphasis in the original). The
political idea at the heart of the firm-state analogy is that individuals living together under
conditions of strong equality2 have an inalienable right to be governed in democratic ways. For

2
According to Dahl, equality is strong if in matters that concerns them individuals “all are equally
qualified to decide” (Dahl, 1989, 57).
Dahl, the scope of this inalienable right, originally defined with reference to political forms of
government, can be extended to other types of human association. The intuition is that if one can
show that firms are relevantly similar to political governments, then one is entitled to claim that
the members of firms have an inalienable right to govern themselves in democratic ways (Dahl,
1986, 61). Dahl is aware, however, that although this argument applies prima facie to the political
community, where equality trumps private property, it does not necessarily apply at the level of
the manifold associations that exist within the democratically organized polity itself. For strong
equality to hold, enterprises would have to be owned by workers. Thus, for Dahl, workers’
control is inseparable from workers’ ownership.
The debate spawned by Dahl’s work has seen a proliferation of arguments either
supporting or rejecting the state-firm analogy, which has led to some qualifications of his original
claim. On the one hand, supporters have contended that, while a perfect analogy between firms
and states may not hold, the similarities are nevertheless significant, so that some normative
bridges between the two types of institutions can be built. Supporters of the state-firm analogy
have thus devoted considerable efforts to prove that states, like firms, do have goals (Landemore
and Ferreras, 2016; Moriarty, 2005), or that firms, like states, do have high exit costs, i.e. it is
difficult for individuals to leave them (González-Ricoy, 2014a; Moriarty, 2005). On the other
hand, critics have highlighted disanalogies that, according to them, invalidate the overall
analogical strategy. Explicit criticisms of the state-firm analogy (e.g., Arneson, 1993;
Narveson,1992; Mayer, 2000; Phillips and Margolis, 1999) adopt the same argumentative strategy:
it consists in identifying at least one dimension with reference to which firms differ significantly
from states. Discussions have mainly revolved around the following points: exit costs, property
rights, the relevance of expertise, the nature of the goals pursued, or environmental
circumstances.
As it stands, the debate seems inconclusive because the success of analogical arguments
depends heavily upon the examples chosen, the perspectives adopted, and the data used.
Nonetheless, analogical arguments have some merits. While they may not provide direct support
for workplace democracy, they help put the question in a broader cultural and historical
perspective, which can contribute towards a critical reconsideration of received views and of
existing institutional arrangements.

I.2 Arguments related to meaningful work

The idea that the democratization of the workplace has beneficial effects on the quality of
work dates back at least to the socialist tradition. Well-being, rather than self-government as such,
provides the normative core of this argument. Democratization may reduce the alienating
consequences of non-autonomous work (Dejours et al., 2018). Given the nature of the claim that
workplace democracy improves the quality of work, its justification has been the object of
empirical as well as theoretical arguments.
Empirical investigations of this claim have been pursued in the sociology and psychology
of work. A long tradition of work-studies has provided compelling empirical evidence for the
positive correlation between quality of work, physical and mental health, and the development of
intellectual, moral, and other capacities (Veltman 2016; Dejours et al., 2018)). However, the
relation between meaningful work and workplace democracy is contested: some authors (e.g.,
Schwarz, 1982; Yeoman 2014) contend that workplace democracy is a necessary requirement for
meaningful work, while others (e.g., Veltman, 2016; Roessler, 2012) consider workplace
democracy neither necessary nor sufficient for making work meaningful. Yet others (e.g.,
Arneson, 1987) deny that meaningful work can offer a valid justification for workplace
democracy.
Arguments in support of workplace democracy based on the idea of meaningful work
focus on two sets of concepts. On the one hand, some authors emphasize the relevance of
meaningful work for individual autonomy. Arguments of this type (e.g., Schwarz, 1982; Roessler,
2012; Yeoman, 2014) build on the concept of autonomy to mediate between the concepts of
meaningful work and democracy. Autonomy, defined as the capacity and possibility to set one’s
goals, to choose the means to achieve them, and to revise them in light of experience is seen as a
pre-condition of meaningfulness, and workplace democracy is then justified as the set of
institutional conditions required to achieve autonomy. On the other hand, authors steeped in the
tradition of critical theory have relied on the notions of alienation and recognition to contend
that the workplace needs to be democratized.
Theories of recognition tend to contrast “expressive” or meaningful work with merely
instrumental conceptions that consider work a mere means for achieving external ends such as
salary. Some authors (see Smith and Deranty, 2011) have insisted that instrumental conceptions
of work fail to explain why work experience so often engenders pathologies and produces human
suffering. Expressivist conceptions contend that through work, human beings achieve their
identity or realize their specific human capacities. Recognition-based conceptions of work
develop a similar argumentative line, but look for dimensions of work experience that have a
broader moral relevance, such as the contribution of work to self-respect. While the connection
between quality of work and workplace democracy is not always explicit within this tradition, a
move away from an instrumental conception of work is explicitly related to autonomy, conceived
as a necessary condition of human flourishing. This view has been notably developed within the
pragmatist tradition, particularly in the seminal works of Dewey (Dewey 1927) and Mary Parker
Follett (Follett 2003).
An obvious, although often implicit, criticism of these views comes from liberal theories
of capitalism and follow two main argumentative lines. According to the first, the beneficial
effects of democratization on psycho-social well-being have not been empirically proven.
According to the second, there exists a trade-off between a democracy-induced increase in
meaningfulness and the higher personal costs it would bring, such as a negative impact on free
time, or increased material risks in the case of worker-ownership (Arneson, 1987). Liberal critics
argue then that meaningful work is a matter of personal preference. One may well prefer a job
that is boring but better paid, to one that is meaningful but requires a higher degree of
involvement. Because there is no independent ground to say what is desirable, other than what
people do in fact desire, we have no reasons to say that the state should enforce workplace
democracy, considered as the necessary condition for achieving meaningfulness at work
(Thomas, 2017). Critics of this line of argument might question, however, whether the current
preferences of individuals should be given so much weight, given that many people do not have
the option to enter a democratic workplace or may not even know about this possibility.

I.3 Arguments based on non-domination and relational equality

Arguments in favor of workplace democracy can also be developed by building on a
notion of neo-republican freedom as non-domination. Generally speaking, this notion of
freedom emphasizes the importance of independence from arbitrary interference (e.g., Pettit,
2012). Such freedom can be secured in different ways: for example, by granting individuals
certain rights, or by making those who hold positions of authority accountable to those over
whom they have authority, so that they have to track the latter’s interests in their decisions.
Similar arguments can also be made on the basis of relational egalitarianism, a strand of
egalitarianism that emphasizes that social relations must be characterized by equality (see
especially the chapters of Fourie et al., 2015). As Anderson has famously put it: the aim of
egalitarian justice is “to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to
others” (Anderson, 1999, 288f.). Thus, while republicanism focuses on the absence of
domination, relational egalitarianism focuses on the quality of horizontal relations. While there is
a slightly different focus between these two approaches, what unites them is the rejection of
certain forms of hierarchies.
Both from a neo-republican and from a relational egalitarian perspective, hierarchical
workplaces are problematic if employees are at the mercy of employers, at the risk of being
dismissed and therefore of losing their income: employees stand under the arbitrary will of their
bosses, which contradicts the fundamental imperative to create and maintain egalitarian
relationships in society (González-Ricoy, 2014; Breen, 2015; Néron, 2015; Anderson, 2017).
These power relations can extend beyond working hours, having an impact on people’s private
and political lives, as when employers pressure employees into contributing to political campaigns
(Hertel-Fernandez, 2017). Hence, within corporate hierarchies, individuals cannot develop
egalitarian relations with each other (or only with those who are on the same level of hierarchy,
but not with others). Moreover, they are dominated by those above them in the hierarchy. Often,
these hierarchical relations violate the “eyeball test” developed by Philip Pettit: the members of a
society must be able to encounter each other “on eye level,” as moral equals without fear or
submissiveness (Pettit, 2014, chap. 4).
While economists often assume that individuals can always exit employment relations and
therefore cannot be said to be dominated by employers, many writers from the neo-republican
and relational egalitarian camp point out that this is an unrealistic assumption. After all, most
employees need an income and are often also tied to specific locations (e.g., Anderson, 2017;
Néron, 2015). Even if employees can leave one specific job, they often cannot leave the sphere of
hierarchical employment (e.g., by becoming self-employed), because they need an income and
many jobs can be done only in the context of large-scale organizations.3 Hence, as long as
workers have no substantive exit options, authority relations need to be tackled within firms—
this is the basis for an argument for workplace democracy, because vertical relations based on
democratic elections are, from this perspective, fundamentally different from hierarchies without
elections.
Critics question, however, whether there really is a direct argument from republican
freedom or relational equality to workplace democracy. It is hard to deny that one can draw a line
from republican freedom and relational equality to what Hsieh calls “workplace republicanism”
(2005), i.e., workplaces in which individuals have certain guaranteed rights that protect them from
arbitrary interference. But this does not necessarily justify an equal say for all employees, and
there may be other reasons—e.g., considerations of efficiency—that could speak against
workplace democracy. A more moderate position is that workers who value non-domination at
the workplace should have the opportunity to work at democratic companies (Jacob &
Neuhäuser, 2018). A crucial empirical question in this context is whether democratic states can
successfully secure the rights of employees vis-à-vis employers, e.g., whether the legal system is
effective in protecting the former from the latter’s arbitrary decisions or whether protecting these
rights requires democratic structures within companies.

I.4 Arguments from democratic education and stability

Additional arguments for workplace democracy come from considerations of civic virtue
and the need to build habits of democratic decision-making among citizens. The workplace is the
most important social space for adult individuals to spend large parts of their lives, hence, it can,
potentially, provide “an education in the management of collective affairs that is difficult to
parallel elsewhere” (Pateman, 1970, 43; see also Mason, 1982; Gould, 1989). Workplace
democracy could be an instrument for embedding a democratic culture in societies, thereby
strengthening civic participation and contributing to the stability of the democratic system.
This argument takes up earlier arguments by Tocqueville (2000 [1835/40]) and J. S. Mill
(e.g., 2008 [1848/1873], Part II chap. 1) about the social preconditions of democracy. It crucially
depends on empirical claims about the positive effect of workplace democracy on individuals’
civic virtues and democratic skills, a relation that has been called the “spillover” effect (O’Neill,
2008). There has been some empirical research attempting to establish such an effect, either in its
direct form or in more complex versions (for an overview, see, e.g., Carter, 2006). The evidence

3
At least this holds for societies without a sufficiently high unconditional basic income (see, e.g.,
Widerquist, 2013; for a critical discussion, see, e.g., Jubb, 2008).
is inconclusive, and as Carter (2006) rightly points out, there are many variables that can
confound the relation between cause and effect, e.g., job autonomy or the degree of conflict in
firms. Moreover, it is difficult to empirically explore the broader systemic effects of workplace
democracy on political democracy, as long as we have no democratic countries with fully
democratized workplaces. Hence, the empirical claims that workplace democracy would be
necessary or sufficient for political democracy to flourish in the long run have been neither
confirmed nor rejected so far.

Part II. Arguments against workplace democracy

There are three main arguments brought forward against the idea of workplace
democracy. The first argument states that for various reasons democratic workplaces are
inefficient in most markets and unable to compete with hierarchical companies. According to the
second argument, it is unrealistic to assume that there can and will be a spontaneous transition
towards a democratization of all or at least the majority of workplaces. The third argument claims
that a mandatory transition to democratic workplaces interferes in an unjustified way with the
liberties of citizens and especially of employees, who may prefer to work in hierarchical
companies. None of these three arguments states that there should be no democratic workplaces
at all. Instead, they all—and especially all three taken together—imply that governments should
not intervene in markets and directly prescribe the democratization of workplaces.

II.1 Arguments from efficiency

The argument that democratic workplaces are inefficient—and therefore less common
than hierarchical companies—can take many different forms, depending on what is taken to be
the root cause of the inefficiency and the resulting competitive disadvantage. In his survey of the
literature, Gregory Dow (2003) lists and critically discusses five possible causes for inefficiency
on which the argument could rest.
The first possible cause is that democratic workplaces lack the kind of control that is
needed to ensure that workers will not abuse assets or free-ride with respect to maintenance
(Alston and Gillespie, 1989). The second is a lack of monitoring to ensure employees’
performance at work (Alchian and Demsitz, 1972; Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1994). Third, capital
owners may be less willing to finance democratic workplaces due to perceived higher risk,
especially of moral hazards (Drèze, 1993; Bowles and Gintis, 1993; Putterman, 1993). The fourth
possible cause, taken by many authors to be the main problem, is that employees of democratic
workplaces have to concentrate all their capital in the one company where they also work, which
is in contradiction to the prescribed strategy of portfolio diversification to reduce risk (Meade,
1972; Jensen and Meckling, 1979; Drèze, 1989; Bowles and Gintis, 1996; Putterman, 1993; Bonin,
Jones, and Putterman, 1993). And the fifth debated cause is that the processes of collective
decision making in democratic workplaces would create high additional transaction costs
(Hansman, 1996).
Dow (2003) has three general replies to these arguments. First, none of them are specific
to democratic workplaces, but in one form or another, they can be found in hierarchical
companies as well. For instance, shareholders also have problems with monitoring each other.
Second, democratic workplaces have specific advantages that need to be balanced against
possible disadvantages. For example, employees in democratic workplaces may have higher
intrinsic motivation and be more willing to share information, which could balance the lack of
monitoring. Third, the empirical evidence for and against the different assumed causes is
inconclusive, especially since democratic workplaces are so rare. There are some studies which
suggest that democratic workplaces are not less, but more efficient than other workplaces (for a
recent survey: Pérotin 2017).4 However, it is also important to take note of the fact that the rarity

4
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing us on this issue and providing us with sources.
of democratic workplaces is in need of explanation and that the assumption of mutually
reinforcing forms of inefficiency does provide such an explanation (Jacob and Neuhäuser, 2018).
But commentators have also suggested other possible explanations, such as path dependencies or
network effects among capitalist firms (e.g., Bowles and Gintis, 1993).

II.2 Arguments from the feasibility of a transition

In his Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill famously predicted that there will be a
spontaneous transition towards a democratization of workplaces. He wrote: “The form of
association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to
predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and workpeople without a
voice in the management, but the association of the laborers themselves on terms of equality,
collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations and working under
managers elected and removable by themselves” (Mill, 2008, 147). However, this has not
happened so far and one possible explanation for the lack of this spontaneous transition is that
Mill and those who follow him work with unrealistic assumptions regarding the causal structure
of such a spontaneous transition (Baum, 2007).
Mill thought that such a transition would happen because the socio-economic conditions
and the education of workers would improve. They would then vote for the taxation of
concentrated forms of capital, which would lead to a more equal distribution of capital. This
would in turn allow workers to take over their factories. This still is a prominent position today.
In Justice as Fairness (2001), John Rawls follows Mill to a large extent and argues that only a
property-owning democracy, where capital is widely and almost equally distributed within society,
or market socialism—both of which would, presumably, include forms of workplace
democracy—are compatible with the demands of justice. Hence, Rawls faces the same challenge
of a possible lack of realistic assumptions, as contemporary Rawlsians (O’Neill, 2008; Thomas,
2016) acknowledge.
So, why does such a transition appear to be unrealistic? There are two main arguments.
One is that it is unrealistic to assume that employees have a strong interest in governing their
own workplaces; we discuss this possible explanation in the next section. The other is that wage-
dependent employees lack the necessary political control to make such a transition happen.
According to this argument, capital owners have a great deal of influence over politics and can
block any attempt to distribute capital more equally (Sayer, 2015). This can happen directly
through lobbying and threats of capital flight or it can happen indirectly through the production
of ideology. In any case, the transition to workplace democracies is assumed to be unrealistic
because one of its enabling conditions, property-owning democracy, is seen as unrealistic.
However, it is also possible to argue that property-owning democracy is not a precondition for
workplace democracy, but that a piecemeal transition on both levels would be mutually
reinforcing.

II.3 Arguments from liberalism

One direct way to ensure the democratization of workplaces is to turn it into a legal
requirement (Dahl, 1985; for discussion Malleson, 2014). If the democratization of workplaces
became a legal requirement, then all employees would be forced to work in democratic
workplaces. This would solve the transition problem and the problem of relative inefficiency as
compared to capitalist firms. However, it is argued against this legal solution that it is illiberal,
because it restricts the freedom of capital owners and also of employees in an unjustified way.
The freedom of capital owners is restricted because not only may they want to use their
capital to make profits, but they may also value entrepreneurship, which leads to an interest in
directing the companies they own (Tomasi, 2013). The chance of membership in senior
management is significantly reduced for capital-owners when control rights go to employees as a
legal requirement. The employees would have to be willing to elect and constantly reelect the
capital owner as director of the company, which is far from ensured. This argument seems
particularly plausible for small businesses run by their owners; it is less clear how it would apply
to publicly traded corporations, where shareholders delegate their control power to the
management. For such companies, the question would be whether capital owners would be
willing to fund democratic companies in which they have no (or a reduced) say in management
or—as indicated in the Introduction—whether the system of capital ownership would have to be
fundamentally restructured.
Some critics also argue mandatory workplace democracy would restrict the freedom of
employees because they could not choose to work for hierarchical companies. They may want to
do so for the simple reason that they do not value taking part in democratic self-government in
the workplace, and trust in the ability of capital owners or the managers the latter choose. It
could also be the case that hierarchical workplaces are more efficient than democratic workplaces
and therefore able to pay higher wages to workers. Someone may then prefer a higher salary over
democratic rights at work (Thomas, 2017). This argument, however, does not rule out the option
that while not mandatory, workplace democracy is supported by the state in order to give
employees a meaningful choice about the kind of firm they want to work for (Jacob and
Neuhäuser, 2018).
In order to defeat the liberal objection, it would be necessary to show that hierarchical
companies violate some rights or do unjustified harm or at least that the benefits of a regulated
democratization outweigh the liberal costs of this regulation. The merits of the liberal objection
therefore depend on the strength of the arguments discussed in the previous two sections.

Conclusion
As these arguments show, the debate about workplace democracy is currently
inconclusive. We can nonetheless distinguish a certain pattern: core arguments in favor of
workplace democracy emphasize the intrinsic value of democratic practices as an expression of
egalitarian social relations, while there are additional arguments of an instrumental nature (such as
more meaningful work or the support of democratic habits and skills). Core arguments against
workplace democracy focus on the negative consequences it may have, while there is only one
intrinsic argument, that about potentially illegitimate interferences with the liberties of capital
owners or employees. This latter issue raises larger questions about what it means to have rights,
about what to do if different rights clash, and about the role of the state in securing citizens’
autonomy and the conditions for using one’s rights in a meaningful way, e.g., by securing
sufficient options to choose from. These are issues we cannot address here, but it should be
noted that the fault line is likely to be similar to that between “classical” and “high liberal” or
“social liberal” traditions, i.e., between those who attach great weight to economic rights and
liberties and those who want to balance them with other rights and liberties (Freeman, 2011).
Those in the latter camp are likely to be more open to ideas about workplace democracy than
those in the former.
However, some of the inconclusiveness of the debate stems from the lack of clear
empirical evidence about the actual consequences of workplace democracy. As emphasized
throughout the paper, these concern points such as the effects of democratization on meaningful
work, the robustness of workers’ rights in systems with and without workplace democracy, the
implications for civic virtue, and—perhaps most centrally—the relation between democratization
and efficiency. Here, the philosophical debate could benefit from integrating empirical research;
for example, on the German co-determination system (e.g., Jackson, 2016), on existing co-
operatives (e.g., Penceval, 2012), or on the psycho-social effects of different workplace
environments (e.g., Weber, 2009). This research indicates that at least some types of more or less
democratic enterprises can survive in an environment in which most firms are capitalist, and that
the spread of democratic enterprises can benefit the individuals working there as well as the
society at large.
But there can only be empirical research where there are empirical cases. Hence, in the
area of workplace democracy, experimentation for the purpose of social learning, in the sense of
“real utopias” (Wright, 2010), seems called for. Given that the strongest counter-arguments are
those against mandatory workplace democracy, democratic governments may want to support
voluntary experiments with democratic governance, where social scientists could carefully observe
to understand what does and does not work. These insights would help illuminate the strength of
different arguments based on the consequences of workplace democracy. And they could also be fed
back into the conceptual and normative debate about the values—of self-determination, equal
respect, shared control, or others—that some believe a workplace should realize.

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