13031 Participation Programs in Work Organizations 1

Credits: 3 graduate credits in Business Administration / Organizational Behavior in Management or in Democracy Studies / Government and Public Policy or Society and Politics

Prerequisites for the MBA: Operations Research, Accounting for Managers, Marketing, Management and Organizational Behavior, Financial Management, Corporate Law for Managers

Prerequisites for Democracy Studies: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues, Contemporary Democratic Theories, Selected Topics in Public Policy

The course is based on Participation Programs in Work Organizations: Past, Present, and Scenarios for the Future, by A. Bar Haim (Quorum Books, 2002) and on a reader edited by Hana Ornoy.

Objectives: The course describes, analyzes and evaluates participation programs and democracy in the workplace, in a variety of organizational forms and in different countries. Attempts to implement employee participation in management, and democratic governance in the workplace, have occurred worldwide for decades, as tools to improve occupational and managerial effectiveness in business and public workplaces, to lessen work alienation and to reduce resistance to management, and, as an end in itself, to expand democracy and equality in the workplace.

Topics: Participation programs and industrial democracy – mapping the field; Two generations of participation programs and democracy in the workplace; An assessment model for participation programs; The future of participation programs and democracy in the workplace.

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1Students may write a seminar paper in this course only in the framework of studies toward a Master's degree in Democracy Studies.