Space for Company Democracy
Space is a vital element in a system for the development of anything, as it defines the freedom needed to evolve, mature, and contribute. Lack of space is lack of freedom, which means lack of progress and development. Organizations are systems that are ob
- PDF / 503,745 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 16 Downloads / 173 Views
Abstract Space is a vital element in a system for the development of anything, as it defines the freedom needed to evolve, mature, and contribute. Lack of space is lack of freedom, which means lack of progress and development. Organizations are systems that are obliged to give space to new management and leadership initiatives. The Company Democracy Model, presented in this paper, is based on the space given to people to act in a democratic environment where ideas lead to meritocracy, valid knowledge, innovation, competitiveness, extroversion, and other benefits and ideals. Democracy, on the other hand, can be annoying to those resisting and reducing the space, freedom, and opportunity that people deserve to be judged upon. The paper presents numerous reasons why organizations fail to learn from their mistakes, and provides a democratic co-evolutionary and co-opetitive framework that can significantly contribute to organizational development, as long as a minimum of space is given to freedom of speech and communication. Keywords Democracy Knowledge Innovation
Change management Applied philosophy
Leadership
Performance
1 Introduction In the world of management and leadership, every few years new buzzwords appear, attempting to refresh and maintain old practices, but avoid creating new ones. Many times in the past, and even today, such progress in management and E. Markopoulos Department of Production, School of Technology, University of Vaasa (UVA), 65101 Vaasa, Finland e-mail: [email protected] H. Vanharanta (&) Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Industrial Management, Pohjoisranta 11 A, P.O. Box 300, 28101 Pori, Finland e-mail: hannu.vanharanta@tut.fi © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 J.I. Kantola et al. (eds.), Advances in Human Factors, Business Management, Training and Education, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 498, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42070-7_26
275
276
E. Markopoulos and H. Vanharanta
leadership has resulted in great failures or zero contribution to the economy and the society by those who insist on managing and leading with old structures, constructs, and concepts, unable to see the current reality clearly. Management gurus and consultants tend to make up new trendy words, under which they “hide” the good old recipes, driven only by immediate, fast, measurable, and quantifiable profitability for productivity- and performance-increasing targets. Changes in the business environment are so rapid, that company management either cannot understand the real business situation properly, by not being close to the real markets, or face communication obstacles due to their reluctance to handle mutual business promises, requirements, and responsibilities. Knowledge workers are the people who make change happen and create the future. They can understand what is required and take responsibility as long as they are properly treated by company management. They also have a lot of knowledge and do not need the stick or carrot to innovate. All they need is a responsive en
Data Loading...
