Contradictions of Democracy in a Workers’ Cooperative
基于对一家工人合作社七年的参与观察，研究组织民主在外部环境压力下如何演化，揭示民主进程在民主组织中仍面临的矛盾。
Organizational democracy has become a key issue in current change-management programmes, such as restructuring, total quality management and Enterprise Resource Planning, and there has been a persistent quest for a post-Fordist model in recent times. The article emphasizes the need to study democratic processes per se, given that democracy faces significant odds vis-a-vis the larger context, even in those organizations that have been expressly initiated for democratic functioning. The contradictions with the context inevitably manifest themselves inside the organization as well. The present study makes a case for understanding organizational democracy as an evolving reality, based on participant observation of democratic functioning within a workers’ cooperative over seven years.