Employment Relations

At the heart of the dignified organization is the management of employment relations. Employee participation is focused on democratic decision making by the employees. This may be organized via work councils or trade unions, or via direct representation of the employees in decision making processes (De Jong and Van Witteloostuijn 2004) . As larger organizations will face more complex decision making processes, democratically elected representatives might be appointed such that the daily operations are not hindered by time consuming elections. However, important decisions that affect the complete organization and its context should take the involvement of not only the workers into account, but also other stakeholders, such as the government and society as a whole. As such, democratically appointed external representatives might also be included in the process. Only in this way can fair and dignified decisions which will receive wide support from stakeholders be made. Hence, a dignity approach to employment relations should be stakeholder-focused, not solely worker-, manager, or shareholder-focused.

Critics could argue that setting up and running this democratic way of organizing is too costly. However, costs can be reduced by having a vertically staged approach; for example, an organization might use elected representatives so that one person can represent many others. Moreover, the horizontal scope of ‘who votes for what’ can be managed as well; if, for instance, team-level issues could only be voted on by direct stakeholders, not all organizational members. Additionally, different timeframes might be used for different decisions. For example, top-level decisions could be voted on each four or five years, whilst lower-level decisions can have shorter voting cycles. Hence, by taking smart vertical, horizontal, and temporal design decisions, organization can design an efficient democratic system.