The Participation Gap: Reproducing Socioeconomic Inequality in Workplace Participation

While workplace participation is widely endorsed as both a democratic ideal and a managerial imperative, access to it remains unequally distributed. Drawing on a Bourdieu-inspired organisational field perspective, this study examines how perceived inequalities in workplace participation are structured by class-based capital distributions and classed dispositions that align, or fail to align, with dominant organisational norms. Using original survey data from Switzerland, the article finds that individuals with higher socioeconomic standing report significantly greater access to workplace participation, even after accounting for their hierarchical position, educational attainment, and conventional sociodemographic factors. This relationship is mediated by classed dispositions differentially attuned to the rules of the game in the organisational field. The article thus challenges the normative assumption that participation inherently promotes equality, demonstrating that it can reproduce rather than redress social inequalities when underlying structural imbalances remain unaddressed.