Demerits of Practicing Democracy in Organizational Behavior

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR:
ARGUMENT IN AGAINST THAT ORGANISATION SHOULD
PRACTICE DEMOCRACY

Introduction
Organizational Behavior has always remained a highly debated topic—given the number of
opinions and perspectives on choosing the most suitable form of organizational behavior for
any particular organization. The need for determining a specific set of behaviors and
mannerisms arose from the need to engage employees and other organization stakeholders in
a particular way that would best serve the Company. The structure of an organization
essentially reflects the hierarchy within a working space and plays a pivotal role in
determining a Company’s organizational behavior (Carley and Prietula 2014). An
organization that chooses to practice more democracy in its production processes needs to
build its organizational structure in a democratic way that allows the interference of more
employees in the Company’s decision-making processes. Though this is said to increase
employee motivation and influx of ideas, how far is this valuable in terms of organizational
sanity, is still a debatable point.
Demerits of Organizational Democracy
Organizational Democracy refers to the democratic practices within a Company’s hierarchies
that allow equal powers and responsibilities to the employees of the organization as the
managers and other shareholders. It is a kind of organizational governance, where the
employees enjoy equal rights in the Company’s core-processes, like decision-making,
strategy-building and representation in the external business world. In spite of the several
merits that this kind of organizational behavior promises to bring, democratic organizations
face stiff challenges due to its irrelevant and impractical application of democratic behaviors
in its organizational structures (Snow 2018). The various demerits of practicing democracy in
organizational structures are discussed below:
One of the most evident challenges of practicing democracy in an organization is that it leads
to added confusion and time-consumption in the process of decision-making. A democratic
structure should ideally allow all its employees and other stakeholders, equal opportunities to
voice their opinions in the process of strategizing or decision-making. Inclusion of employee
opinions in crucial decision-making might incur subsequent losses—as the perspective of the
owner or the manager would always be more profit-oriented, unlike the employees, whose
main agenda is to secure better living conditions. In case of a democratic decision-making
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