Stephen Taub, CFO.com | US
February 8, 2007

Societal Democracy - Fact or Fiction Considering Undemocratic Organizations and the Absence of Participative Political Democracy

Shareholders should not be the only ones to determine management remuneration. Rather, given that management decides labour remuneration, so too should labour have a say in management remuneration. We must strive to adopt the total stakeholder approach not only in organizations but also in all societal decision making processes. If we purportedly live in a democracy, then why are our organizations autocratic? In other words, if we claim to live in democracy and in simple terms work consumes 5/7 of our time, as days of the week, then by logical extension, we are only exercising democratic rights for 2/7 of the week and only when we vote to elect politicians rather than by continuous participative democracy of society. Thus, we clearly live in an incomplete democracy insofar as we are governed by the dictates of organizational administration and control by management and also, a lack of participative democracy, with respect to political decisions, external to organizations.

Posted by David Newman | Feb 10, 2007 10:38 AM ET