Democracy in Organizations: Membership Participation and Organizational Characteristics in U.S. Retail Food Co-operatives

In this paper we study one element of the problem of democracy and organization — how to obtain and sustain the participation of members in an organization. The research setting is the eighteen storefront food co-operatives in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, 1977-78. The general research question around which we orient our work asks: What is the relationship of selected aspects of ideology, structure, and process to participation in organizations in which participation is legitimate? Our analysis suggests not only that ideology, structures and processes affect scope of member participation, but that they are not independent in their effects. These findings indicate some possible directions towards the design of participatory-democratic organizations.