Democratizing Business Corporations. An Exercise in Transitional Theory

Dissertation, Utrecht University (2025)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Business corporations hold an enormous amount of power towards employees, contractors, customers, and the general public and they do so largely without effective democratic control. Within the workplace democracy debate scholars have argued that this current state is unjustifiable and that corporations must be democratized. But what exactly does that mean? In my thesis, I explore three questions regarding the details of democratization. First, who should be enfranchised in a democratic business corporation? Second, what are plausible pathways towards democratic corporations? And, third, how can we ensure that democratized business corporations last? I discuss these questions in the spirit of methodological realism, paying special attention to considerations of feasibility, ability, and motivation as well as empirical data and examples. I argue that democratization should involve a number of constituencies beyond workers, especially customers and local populations, because an all-affected principle of participation best captures what is distinctive about corporate power. I then offer a number of institutional innovations for the process of democratization. Building on the example of the Berlin expropriation campaign, I argue that expropriation policies can help circumvent the power of those opposed to democratization and provide a helpful path towards democratization. I suggest that a transitional democratic dictatorship modelled after Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat could solve problems of cooperation and sabotage for newly democratized corporations. And, finally, I propose a class-specific corporate tribunate and a right to strike for the democratic corporation to provide institutional counterpower in order to prevent elite capture and the degeneration of democratic corporations.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Corporate knowledge and corporate power. Reining in the power of corporations as epistemic agents.Lisa Herzog - 2024 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (3):363-382.
Governing the Global Corporation.Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee - 2010 - Business Ethics Quarterly 20 (2):265-274.
Introduction: corporate power and political domination.Christian Neuhäuser & Andreas Oldenbourg - 2024 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27 (3):305-316.
Political theories of the business corporation.Rutger Claassen - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 18 (1):e12892.
Democratizing Corporate Governance.Nicolas Dahan - 2013 - Business and Society 52 (3):473-514.

Analytics

Added to PP
2025-01-22

Downloads
83 (#255,394)

6 months
83 (#73,712)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Philipp Stehr
Utrecht University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references