Democratization of Workplace through Democratic Innovation

The paper examines how democratic innovations can be applied in democratizing decision-making processes within private organizations, such as firms. The paper adopts a systemic approach, in which organizations are studied as a political systems with a variety of interconnecting sites taking part in decision-making processes. The main argument of the study is that the democratization the decision-making processes can be enhanced by institutional design, where various complementary practices are used during the process. The empirical part of the research is based on a case study in The Finnish Federation of Settlement Houses (FFSH), which is a nationwide non-governmental organization. In 2015 the FFSH conducted four organization juries, where workers had a chance to discuss about the upcoming organization reform and write down their proposals. In addition to juries, the FFSH also adopted various instruments, such as online surveys, discussion forums and workgroups, where the workers could express their concerns and comment on juries’ proposals. The paper examines how well the juries corresponded to democracy criteria. It also scrutinizes the qualities of the other instruments that were used during the process and evaluates their influence on the democratic quality of the decision-making process. The data consists of survey, interviews, observation and documents, which are analyzed using qualitative content analysis and case process tracing. The results suggest that while the juries had some significant shortcomings, the complementary practices and mechanisms carried certain democratic virtues that complemented the juries and increased the democratic quality of the decision-making process.