In the past few years, there is a growing movement among scholars around the world to promote the topic of the democratization of work (https://democratizingwork.org/), revitalizing a long-standing debate through scholarly discussions as well as public engagement events in many different countries. The publication and spread of the democratizing work manifesto, which has been supported by more than 6,000 signatures to date, made it salient that the success of such initiative is doubted without democratizing the very structures in which work is executed i.e., organizations.
Some classic accounts are extremely discouraging for the possibility to realize democratic organizations (see, for example, the “iron law of oligarchy” formulated by Robert Michels, 1966 [1911]). However, for Weber (2019 [1922]), bureaucracy was one of the principal means through which to realize more democratic societies, based on the equal treatment of citizens and of their issues. Likewise, the possibility to bring democracy in workplaces was a foundational for the Industrial Relations research field (see the classic work of Webb and Webb, 2010 [1897], in this regard).