Workplace, Democracy, and Responsibility: Organizational Structures and Their Influence on Political Agency in Democratic Societies
(2026) BUSN09 20261Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- People spend much of their adult lives within organizations, where they experience varying degrees of voice, participation, and autonomy in their everyday work. The political consequences of how this everyday authority is organized, however, have remained largely unexamined. This thesis asks whether the way work is structured shapes employees' understanding of democracy and their participation in it beyond the workplace, and what this implies for the responsibilities of firms in democratic societies. Through a semi-systematic literature review, it brings together four bodies of scholarship that have developed largely in isolation from one another: democratic theory, organizational research, political socialization, and Political Corporate... (More)
- People spend much of their adult lives within organizations, where they experience varying degrees of voice, participation, and autonomy in their everyday work. The political consequences of how this everyday authority is organized, however, have remained largely unexamined. This thesis asks whether the way work is structured shapes employees' understanding of democracy and their participation in it beyond the workplace, and what this implies for the responsibilities of firms in democratic societies. Through a semi-systematic literature review, it brings together four bodies of scholarship that have developed largely in isolation from one another: democratic theory, organizational research, political socialization, and Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR). The synthesis shows that workplace experiences of authority and voice do carry into political life, though not through a single channel, and that their effects are real but conditional on the form participation takes. Building on this, the thesis argues that the foundational PCSR claim, that corporate power generates political responsibility, applies inward to the everyday organisation of work and not only to firms' external conduct. The democratic effects of how work is organized are shown to constitute an externality borne by the public rather than the firm, which places the responsibility beyond purely economic justification. Because participatory and low-voice workplaces form workers in opposite directions, these effects may
further compound across working lives into a widening inequality of democratic agency. The thesis thereby argues for an extension of an internal dimension of corporate political responsibility and reframes the organization of work as a question of democratic, not merely operational, significance. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9246612
- author
- Dadamio, Luna Charlotte LU and Blaes, Luzia LU
- supervisor
-
- Merle Jacob LU
- organization
- course
- BUSN09 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Workplace democracy, political corporate social responsibility, political socialization, spillover thesis, employee voice, democratic agency
- language
- English
- id
- 9246612
- date added to LUP
- 2026-07-27 09:11:49
- date last changed
- 2026-07-27 09:11:49
@misc{9246612,
abstract = {{People spend much of their adult lives within organizations, where they experience varying degrees of voice, participation, and autonomy in their everyday work. The political consequences of how this everyday authority is organized, however, have remained largely unexamined. This thesis asks whether the way work is structured shapes employees' understanding of democracy and their participation in it beyond the workplace, and what this implies for the responsibilities of firms in democratic societies. Through a semi-systematic literature review, it brings together four bodies of scholarship that have developed largely in isolation from one another: democratic theory, organizational research, political socialization, and Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR). The synthesis shows that workplace experiences of authority and voice do carry into political life, though not through a single channel, and that their effects are real but conditional on the form participation takes. Building on this, the thesis argues that the foundational PCSR claim, that corporate power generates political responsibility, applies inward to the everyday organisation of work and not only to firms' external conduct. The democratic effects of how work is organized are shown to constitute an externality borne by the public rather than the firm, which places the responsibility beyond purely economic justification. Because participatory and low-voice workplaces form workers in opposite directions, these effects may
further compound across working lives into a widening inequality of democratic agency. The thesis thereby argues for an extension of an internal dimension of corporate political responsibility and reframes the organization of work as a question of democratic, not merely operational, significance.}},
author = {{Dadamio, Luna Charlotte and Blaes, Luzia}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Workplace, Democracy, and Responsibility: Organizational Structures and Their Influence on Political Agency in Democratic Societies}},
year = {{2026}},
}