Muriel Prévot-Carpentier^[1]

The four texts gathered in this third part testify to an evolution, in the sense of a pluralisation, of the vocabulary linked to the field of democracy at work: the words carrying this idea are no longer just those from the Greek dêmos, the people, and kratein, to rule, but also those of ‘liberating’ work or working ‘differently’. The verb ‘to liberate’ appears to be more recent, coming from the vocabulary of the management sciences as influenced by the work of Getz and Carney (2012), founders of the term; whereas the question of industrial democracy is quite old, dating back to the nineteenth century (Webb, 1897), even if it has been renewed by approaches which call for work democratisation to achieve a democratisation of all social and political relations beyond the systems of representative democracy (Cukier, 2018).

This evolution of vocabulary goes hand in hand with the development of a plurality of organisational models, offering a wide range of practices considered less traditional, sometimes more supportive or even innovative. Thus, questioning the ‘myths surrounding start-ups’, Marion Flécher examines the real novelty carried by this business model and the effectiveness of transforming the ‘classical relations of subordination at work’. In this article, she describes the history of the rise of this business model, shows the birth conditions of the utopian discourse on start-ups, and questions the idea of a ‘shift from a hierarchical and vertical model of work to a supposedly horizontal, digitalised and liberated model’.

Yannick Fondeur traces the gradual establishment of a self-managed business model, an alternative to the large IT engineering services companies, known as ‘SSII’, which appears to have been built in opposition to the usual practices of these companies. Hence the vocabulary of ‘working and doing business differently’, because the traditional model which these digital freelancers do not want to follow is well identified and predominant in their field of expertise and practice. Asserting the specificity of their work practices through a manifesto and a friendly sociability that is essential for their functioning, the colossal and desired extension of the network initially built becomes a tangible challenge, challenging the alleged equality between all members of the organisation.

The term democracy is used so diversely depending on the organisation that, in her chapter, Valentina Grossi suggests defining it as ‘the control over the norms and purposes of the activity that the actors can elaborate collectively during their interactions’. This normative capacity of individuals and collectives in the work activity appears as the transverse foundation of all the texts of this part: what is questioned is the traditional relationship of subordination, that which deprives the individual of citizenship in the space of the company, forbidding him/her to have full control over what he/she achieves and the way he/she achieves it. In this respect, an analysis of the interactions of employees in two types of press companies —one, a web newsroom, smaller in size and possibly more flexible due to the great versatility of its journalists; the other, the printing press newsroom of a national daily newspaper, organised into departments with marked functional specialities— shows that the mere presence of ‘accountability processes’ is not enough to develop normative activity. When a ‘dual relationship’ with the hierarchy is structured in the organisation of work, instead of that of a group favouring ‘reflexivity’, it is much more difficult to participate in the definition of work quality criteria, question the relevance of carrying out a task, or even elaborate ‘alternative [norms] to the injunctions from the hierarchy’.

The pluralisation of the vocabulary of work democratisation may also have stemmed from the fact that the very idea of democracy, that of a people, the dêmos, to whom decision-making power is conferred, was not sufficient to signify all that it could cover. For it is possible to brandish democracy at work, and even to make it a principle in the legal status of its structure, but without evincing the same in terms of its organisation or its social group of belonging. This is what Anne Catherine Wagner shows very well with the dividing line she draws in the Cooperative and Participative Societies (Sociétés Coopératives et Participatives, SCOP), with white-collar workers who understand democracy as ‘participation in decision-making bodies’, whereas for blue-collar workers it must be ‘embodied’ in the workplace, in the literal sense of taking shape ‘in terms of the right to intervene in the productive process or the freedom to organise one’s own work and of protection against arbitrary action’. All of the organisations analysed and proposed in this third part present this second meaning. Indeed, the proposed articles are based on ethnographies that show how some concepts of an enabling or emancipating character are rooted in individual or collective practices. In all of them, the analysis is positioned at the level of work, i.e., anchored in work activity, and that will undoubtedly arouse the reader’s interest.

Bibliography

Cukier A., 2018, Le travail démocratique, Paris, PUF.

Getz I. et Carney B., 2012, Liberté & Cie, Paris, Fayard.

Webb S. et B., 1897, Industrial Democracy, Londres, Longmans, Green and Co.

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