Economic and Industrial Democracy

Social democracy is an assertion of citizens' rights: the entitlement of all citizens, by reason of citizenship, to share equally in the standards of living which a particular society is technically capable of generating. Existing literature from political economy, political science and class theory can be marshalled in defence of this conception. Reconstruction of a coherent theory of social democracy is necessary in order to specify a contemporary political problem that is only incompletely understood: the propensity of social democratic regimes, parties and politicians to retreat, sometimes spectacularly, from past commitments. The paper identifies five requirements of such a theory. In each case there is evidence and interpretation available which not only affirms the viability of social democratic political and economic ambitions but also elaborates the role of labour in contemporary policy-making.

This article analyses the evolution of French firms, distinguishing three areas within a firm: the internal functioning, the social relationships and the organization of work in its strictest sense. The author points out that the implementation of participative management affects only the first two, whereas the organization of work remains deeply influenced by traditional Tayloristic principles. It is argued that this incomplete organizational revolution generates many serious problems.

While the mobilizing character of the populist movements and regimes in the Third World countries offers a great potential for the practice of grassroots democracy, the populist ideology and development strategy, at the same time, set certain serious constraints against genuine democratic practices. This theory is illustrated by a historical analysis of the experience of industrial democracy in Egypt under President Nasser and the subsequent regimes. Industrial democracy was designed to serve as a part of the populist strategy of mobilizing the working class in the post-revolutionary Egypt.

When focusing on countries at different stages of industrial development, a political economy approach to comparative industrial relations analysis avoids the problem of a Eurocentric framework, which excludes countries in regions such as Southeast Asia. Taking the employment relationship as the 'core industrial relation' in capitalist countries, a hierarchy of explanatory variables is used. These variables are first, the mode of production, second, the labour process and finally the historical and cultural specificities of each country. Using these as the basis for analysis, this paper examines industrial relations in ASEAN countries, primarily Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.

Understanding the factors which facilitate or hinder workplace innovation is crucial to the survival of many firms. This study focuses on one such factor workplace unionization. In this study we develop and test a theory of the effect of workplace unionization on innovation which incorporates competing hypotheses from previous studies. The extent to which the unionization-innovation relationship might be generalizable to the influence of other organizational groups on innovation is addressed.