Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self Management: Past, Present, and Future

RC10 involved all the members of its executive in writing a collective paper in order to engage and exchange with other RCs during the ISA Common sessions for this Forum. From its inception in 1978 within ISA, the activities of RC10 on “Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management” have aimed at uniting the professional qualities, social consciousness and experience of its members for work on its field and the promotion of its topics. These seem more than ever part of the struggle for a better future, which we believe should include democracy and participation at all levels from the workplace to the political sphere. However, the responses to the crises have, on the contrary, recently entailed in many countries unpopular austerity measures decided in a top-down technocratic manner that threatened existing social and political participative schemes. Thus participation, organizational democracy, and self-management seem to be shrinking rather than increasing at the global level and increasing inequality, oppression, and ecological destruction have brought about protests and struggles for a better world.

In our contribution we will first present the perspective of RC10 regarding the common topics of the Forum, and then develop what we believe are important topics for future directions, in particularly those steaming from our sessions in this Forum, such as: Public Sociology to promote collaborative research and dialogue between the public and the sociologists on issues of social justice, equality, democracy, participation, working life conditions, and other related issues; the future of participation in organizational life with a focus on the development of capabilities, capacities and innovations; gender relations and the construction of a more participative society by looking at women’s participation in entrepreneurship; unequal opportunities to participation for citizens within total institutions, in particular prisons, and nursing homes; and the need for continuing struggles for democratic participation.