Democracy is a key concept in management and organization studies (MOS), but it is often not explicitly theorized. In this article, we draw on political theory to show how democracy can be clearly integrated in MOS and how this integration opens up a new and important research agenda. We provide an overview of different MOS literatures that include the idea of democracy, such as democratic organizing, corporate political activity or political corporate social responsibility. We distinguish among three research areas based on unique conceptual and analytical foci: (a) democracy within the organization, and democracy as part of the organization’s environment that (b) affects it and/or (c) is influenced by it. We develop a comprehensive framework across these research foci, leveraging four canonical perspectives on democracy (liberal, republican, deliberative and agonistic). This framework helps organize diverse MOS research on democracy, improves conceptual clarity and highlights key future research avenues. We discuss how our framework impacts MOS research, emphasize the importance of recognizing different perspectival assumptions in democracy research in MOS, and explore how studying interactions between these areas can advance such research.
Mena et al. (Thu,) studied this question.