Worker ownership,participation and control: Toward a theoretical model

The administration of the employee-owned or worker cooperative firm must provide for two conceptually separable functions: organizational governance and the management of work. Three theoretical models tend to shape the thinking of those who design the organization: authoritarian, bargaining, and town meeting or community democracy.We review the experience of self-management in Yugoslavia, the Israeli kibbutzim, Mondragon cooperative system, and employee ownership in the United States. We conclude that the model best designed to favor the growth of employee ownership in the United States will be one that combines certain features of all three theoretical models noted above.     

The Public Service Mutual: Theories of Motivational Advantage

Public service mutuals are a form of employee‐led organization in which service workers spin out of the public sector to form “mutuals” that contract back with government to provide a service. This article draws on economic and psychological theory to demonstrate that mutuals can align both self‐interested and altruistic or public service motivations so as to serve the social good; moreover, by offering greater autonomy to public service professionals, mutuals are predicted to encourage energetic and persistent behaviors. In both cases, there is an advantage over alternative forms of organization such as the public sector bureaucracy, the shareholder‐owned private firm, or the nonprofit organization. The employee‐led mutual form, however, may not appeal to risk‐averse workers, its collective decision‐making systems may be inefficient, and external mechanisms may be required to ensure that organizational outcomes are always directed toward the social good.     

Corporate governance,property and democracy: a conceptual critique of shareholder ideology

Despite the resilience of national institutions and practices there are increasing signs that national systems of corporate governance are giving way to an idealized American model of shareholder activism and liquid equity markets. These pressures are ideologically backed by 'shareholderism', which consists of three claims: a prudential, a functional and a moral claim. The prudential one claims superior efficiency for shareholder control and market allocation of capital. The functional one bases its claim for shareholder control on the contribution of risk-carrying capital. The moral one is based on a liberal doctrine of ownership that grounds exclusive control rights in title-holders. This paper addresses the functional and moral claims. It argues that public equity markets do not contribute capital and that the Lockean conception of property is both untenable and morally reprehensible. Instead corporate democracy is proposed as a way to accommodate the conflicting claims of stakeholders. To do so an intelligent division of democratic labour is required. The paper ends with a sketch of such a model, through short outings to the real world of Dutch corporate governance.     

Marin: a Pascalian diversion

Discussion of industrial democracy in Britain has been notably untheoretical, especially with respect to economic theory. There is economic literature on the issue, but it is very much dominated by neoclassical theories of the firm. This essay attempts to assess the arguments of that neo-classicism. Part of this involves some discussion of the basis of the hegemony of that type of economics within theories of the firm, which requires some discussion of the history of the theory of the firm. The conclusion is that whilst neo-classicism is not to be dismissed, an adequate theorisation of the economics of industrial democracy cannot be based on neo-classical premises about the structure and conduct of firms.     

Public policy and employee ownership: Designing economic institutions for a good society

While there are many types of economic arrangements compatible with democratic institutions and smoothly functioning markets, the predominant institutional arrangement in most marked-based democracies is one where the average employee has neither a share of direct ownership nor involvement in governing the company where he works. The substance of this essay deals with recent American attempts to redesign this arrangement, focusing specifically on the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The way we design the ownership of our economic organizations touches issues at the heart of practical political economy. It combines the realities of practice with visions of the good society. The challenge for lawmakers, then, is to think of employee ownership not only in terms of the technical details of public policy-making but as an institutional arrangement with wide-ranging potential implications for how we see and achieve the good.     

New evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic growth

It is often maintained that democracy is a luxury which comes at a price in terms of subsequent slower increases in national living standards. However, various recent cross-section studies on economic growth have found evidence that lack of civil and political liberties is negatively correlated with economic growth. Using a new measure of democracy, which is based upon the number of years that a country can be regarded as a democracy, the robustness of this relationship is examined. Both direct and indirect effects of lack of democratic liberties are analysed. Our main conclusion is that the relationship between democracy and economic growth is not rubust.     

Maximizing shareholder value: a new ideology for corporate governance

The decade-long boom in the US stock market and the more recent boom in the US economy have fostered widespread belief in the economic benefits of the maximization of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance. In this paper, we provide an historical analysis of the rise of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance in the United States, tracing the transformation of US corporate strategy from an orientation towards retention of corporate earnings and reinvestment in corporate growth through the 1970s to one of downsizing of corporate labour forces and distribution of corporate earnings to shareholders over the past two decades. We then consider the recent performance of the US economy, and raise questions about the relation between the maximization of shareholder value and the sustainability of economic prosperity.     

Industrial and economic democracy in Sweden: from consensus to confrontation

Abstract. At the beginning of the 1970s, there was a wide-spread political consensus in Sweden that something had to be done in order to increase employee influence in companies and counteract the concentration of private capital. A series of laws on industrial democracy were passed by Parliament, virtually without opposition. The reforms were followed in 1975–1976 by a push towards economic democracy in the form of so-called wage earners' funds. The trade union movement was the leading actor behind these proposals. This broader issue was much more controversial and soon became the focus of sharp disagreement between the parties and the dominant interest organizations. The article analyses the development from consensus to confrontation in industrial and economic democracy in Sweden. Special attention is given to the Public Commission on Wage Earners' Funds, which sat between 1975–1981 without being able to produce any constructive or concrete results.     

The Determinants of US Public Opinion Towards Democracy Promotion

In this paper, I evaluate two competing perspectives regarding what underlies the public’s support for democracy promotion—a democratic values-based perspective positing that the public’s support for democracy promotion is based on a principled desire to spread American values, beliefs, and ideologies to other countries, and a national interests-based perspective claiming that it is based on a rational desire of Americans to advance the US’ political and economic interests abroad. Using a survey experiment, I find that, in general, Americans are not driven by either democratic values or national interests to support democracy promotion even though they believe that democracy promotion is in the interests of both the recipient country and the United States. Only a subset of the population is motivated to support democracy promotion for the sake of democratic values. This subset of the population is driven by cosmopolitanism—that is, a sense of concern for the welfare of those living in other countries and a sense of moral responsibility to promote democracy abroad derived from the US’ position as a world leader, not national pride.     

AMERICAN LIBERALISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC DREAM: TRANSCENDING THE AMERICAN DREAM

The "American Dream" is a compromise between an elitist dream and a democratic dream. While citizens enjoy equal political and legal rights, democracy is undermined in the economic sphere by vast inequalities of wealth, status and power. The American Dream can and should be transcended through a rediscovery of the "democratic dream" of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a defender of popular government and equality, who viewed vast inequalities of wealth as incompatible with a society of free and independent citizens living together in social harmony. Jefferson favored a variety of policies to expand economic equality. In Jefferson one finds an authentically American set of ideas for challenging the consensus that limits democracy to political and legal rights.     

Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis

Despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature, no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth. This article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy-growth literature. It applies meta-regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth. Using traditional meta-analysis estimators, the bootstrap, and Fixed and Random Effects meta-regression models, it derives several robust conclusions. Taking all the available published evidence together, it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth. However, democracy has robust, significant, and positive indirect effects through higher human capital, lower inflation, lower political instability, and higher levels of economic freedom. Democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade. There also appear to be country- and region-specific democracy-growth effects. Overall, democracy's net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental.     

Democracy and modern political community: limits and possibilities

There are various limits to what is politically possible. The exigencies of economic production and exchange represent one crucial limit to possible political structures. Inherited Marxist and liberal conceptions of the relation between economic systems and political structures are incoherent; these relations need to be reconceived, yet recent socialist political thinking has preferred to focus mainly on the political domain, pursuing a theory of self-governing community. Can there today be a coherent account of such a theory? One way of showing there cannot is by pressing the question of the contours an dsubstance of modern political community. Optimistic theorists of self-governing community rely on a self-enclosed, determinate conception of community that has its imaginative roots in a vision of ancient liberty: the demos exercising legitimate and effective agency over a particular territory. But modern political community cannot be conceived of in this way: because of the presence of global processes of economic causality, there is today no fit between the territorial identity of a political community and its effective powers of agency. Modern liberty (unlike its ancient counterpart) has no specific or determinate location: its availability depends upon an elaborate division of economic and political labour. In these circumstances, it no longer makes sense to heighten the stakes of membership in a political community, as optimistic theorists of democracy do when they call for a more active and participatory civil society. The for appraising what forms of the division of political labour may be legitimate.     

Economic Development and Democracy: the View from Latin America

This article provides a robust empirical test of the economic development thesis using time-series data on seventeen Latin American countries ( n =408). It specifies similar models (both linear and non-linear) to those found in the global comparative literature on economic development and democracy in an effort to replicate their findings at the regional level. The statistical analysis shows that the positive relationship between economic development and democracy is not upheld at this level, even when using alternative measures of both and controlling for sub-regional variation. Overall, the analysis provides a regional 'most likely' study that infirms the main claims of modernization theory.     

India's experience—national,community, public or private health?

India, as the largest democracy, second most populous country, ninth largest industrial power and fifteenth poorest nation, has in respect of health care to be considered as a special case among developing countries. Nevertheless, the identification in India, as an alternative to national welfare provision, of opportunities for returning social and economic responsibilities for health care to local communities is important for both developing and developed countries. This article outlines and comments upon recent developments in providing primary health care in rural communities in India. It concludes by examining possible parallels between self-sustaining community health schemes and the search in developed countries for community and personal involvement so as to overcome emergent limitations of professionalized and welfare systems of care.     

社会治理共同体及其实现机制

中共十九届四中全会提出“建设人人有责、人人尽责、人人享有的社会治理共同体”。共同体的观念起源于古典时期,建立在义务本位的基础上。现代共同体是建立在美国早期新自由主义以及当代社群主义基础上的概念,当前全球“社区复兴运动”与之一脉相承。“人人有责、人人尽责、人人享有”是一个整体,人人有责、人人尽责是建设社会治理共同体的路径,人人享有既体现了与责任、义务相对应的权利,更要求为人人有责、人人尽责提供激励机制。孟加拉国格莱珉小额信贷模式、浙江桐乡“三治信农贷”、浙江温岭民主恳谈会和参与式预算等三个案例表明,人人有责、人人尽责的激励制度必须以特定共同体的政治与文化背景为前提;政府是重要的制度供给主体,但制度执行必然要求获得多元主体协同;制度可持续的关键在于所有主体利益相容且在制度框架下实现共赢。     

Local community on trial

Abstract

While plenty has been written about the reinvention of the social by the Third Way as a new governmentality of control, consensus, and social integration, less has been said about its subtle elision of social and the local, and the implications of this elision for urban and regional regeneration. This is the theme taken up by this paper, beginning with a critical appraisal of the recent turn by New Labour to community cohesion and social capital as a means of overcoming local poverty and disadvantage. It shows how the social has come to be redefined as community, localized, and thrown back at hard-pressed areas as both cause and solution in the area of social, political, and economic regeneration. The second half of the paper develops an alternative designation of the local-social that is less instrumentalist, decidedly a-moral (though equally ethical), agonistically political, and geographically unconstrained. It argues for a return to ideas of agonistic democracy and the society of commitments and connections so thoroughly repudiated by new versions of market social democracy.     

Community in Public Policy: Fad or Foundation?

Both internationally and within Australia public policy is experiencing a rush back to the idea of community. After 15 years of discourse about the new public management and economic rationalism a much older discourse is slipping back into public policy. It is a normative discourse about changing relations between state democracy, market capitalism and civil society in which the idea of community is a central ‘new’ relation used to manage both state and market failures. Already new policy tools emerging from this discourse can be seen with innovations based on concepts such as partnerships, place management, and a raft of community consultation mechanisms. Much of the rhetoric about community as a new foundation for public policy, however, remains confused. The result is a muddle of ideas in which this potentially useful concept is in danger of becoming just another public policy reform fad. This article looks at what policy makers are saying about community, identifies problems in this current usage and offers ways of thinking about community with a view to establishing its policy utility.     

Family‐Friendly Human Resource Policy: Is It Still Working in the Public Sector?

The balance between work and family plays a pivotal but evolving role in human resource policy. Ensuring that human resource policy responds to rapidly changing American family demographics, particularly the recent sharp increase in single unmarried Americans, is a major challenge. Compensation policy long has focused on family‐oriented values by promising increased capacity to provide for a family in exchange for higher work performance. Now, employees are voicing concerns about matters such as quality time with family, and, in turn, employers are responding by implementing more benefits to achieve a better work–family balance. Strong counterarguments against human resource goals targeted only at families advocate personal policies that emphasize work–life balance for all employees. How well has personal policy kept pace with the shifting compensation preferences of public employees? Results suggest that implementation policies are keeping pace with employee satisfaction. However, levels of employee satisfaction often differ widely by demographic characteristics.     

An Economist’s View of Marriage

This article considers recent developments in the economic analysis of families. The usual economic analysis of families has considered families as household firms that produce goods and services. Recently this model of the household firm been challenged by an economic analysis of families that focuses on shared consumption in households rather than shared production. These challenges rest on the assumption that the basic economic problem for families is now coordination of taste and consumption rather than provision under conditions of scarcity. The article considers these challenges to the usual economic analysis of families and concludes that, in spite of the many changes to family structures in recent decades, the model of the household firm is still the most valid model of the family, especially for families with children.