 Beyond democratic degeneration, horizontal and liberated organization? The agonistic approach of a Belgian food co-opKévin Pastier
Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2024, vol. 45, issue 4, 1325-1349 Abstract: This research focuses on democratic organizations and the risk of degeneration. The author studies how horizontal management may maintain a democratic organization’s stability through the examination of a Belgium food cooperative with democratic governance. The article reaches two main conclusions. First, it concludes with a simple empirical finding: horizontal organization does not necessarily prevent degeneration. However, it stresses that implementing horizontal management in democratic organizations allows for daily members’ politicization and then the organization’s pluralization. Second, it proposes a theoretical contribution for a better understanding of democratic degeneration. In a horizontally organized structure, the degeneration process differs from what is typically noted in the literature, as it is triggered by the politicization of the members. Therefore, an agonistic reinterpretation of the traditional degenerative stages is proposed: (1) fusion, (2) pluralization, (3) conflictualization, and (4) centralization. Keywords: Agonism; degeneration theory; food co-op; holacracy; liberated company; organizational democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:45:y:2024:i:4:p:1325-1349 DOI: 10.1177/0143831X231223696 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden |
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