Misconception of Liberalism 111 !

A key concept for taking responsibility in the workplace, specified by Ellerman (2000a) earlier, is that responsibility of each employee is not transferable and needs to be claimed by individuals. Policies such as the code of ethics along these lines include holding employees responsible and making them aware of their duties. However, the resultant kind of responsibility seems to be somewhat passive, because employees are simply given a framework of their duties, which can also be understood as bottom line. Furthermore, policies are used as a legal foundation to apportion liability if the organisation is held responsible for their actions. Ellerman

(2000a) had a different kind of responsibility in mind when he argued that employees need to actively claim responsibility for their work. A general policy about the workplace that every employee has to commit to at the start of employment is obviously not tailored to individual positions and seems to be disabling rather than encouraging. It supports a culture of blame rather than accountability and may have a counterproductive effect on the experience of a democratic workplace.

Organisation One is keenly alert to its employees’ engagement status as measured by the annual engagement survey. Organisation One wants its employees to engage with each other and with the workplace and the internal social media tool may be a way of achieving this. However, the management also understand engagement as a single score that is measured in an annual survey and it seems that actual value of engagement and participation is getting lost on the way.

In the same spirit, one interviewee said that one of their strongest reasons for planning to introduce the internal communication tool was to modify the current top- down dynamic at Organisation One. With social media in place internally, bottom-up communication will be easier to accomplish, as such a platform will allow two-way communication and give every employee the chance to speak up. While road shows and other communication tools might accomplish the same (according to the interviewees), the internal social media tool does not require such a leap in skills as does speaking in front of a group or being confident to start a conversation with the management. However, although social media can be used to implement a two-way communication stream, it is only a tool that might or might not be used. Social media does not implement a space (or as Habermas calls it a sphere), people do. Social media certainly can help to facilitate it, but people, in this case, employees and employers need to create the space first.

Organisation Two provides an example for the above outlined ambiguity of social media use. One interviewee described that social media can be used to have staff work from home and increase the working hours: “I was talking to the contact centre,

where you talk about [our service], they work various hours and they are on phones and they are looking forward to have people working from home, so they can work longer hours and it is more flexible and stuff, but to keep them engaged they want them to be a part of the community. The online social community means that while working from home you still can be in touch with people who are in the actual contact centre and keep that cultural engagement up as well, so they don’t feel isolated and not by themselves and that is another benefit of social [media], it brings culture and people together.”

As previously mentioned, although the management tries to engage with the staff it sometimes is not received well. It seems that there is misunderstanding between employer and employee regarding empathy and a general perspective on work and socio-economic standards. While Ellerman (2000a) refers to a misconception of liberalism, meaning an oversimplification of liberalism on a bigger scale, the organisations do the same with engagement on a smaller scale.

In summary, this section pointed out that taking responsibility is more complex than appointing tasks in line with general policies. Engagement was viewed by one organisation as score that a business unit may or may not achieve. Actual engagement is more difficult to establish; it is a reciprocal process. The newly- introduced social media tool does not automatically enable a better working environment, but employers and employees could use it to do so.

In conclusion, this section discussed five elements of workplace democracy and employers’ and employees’ different understandings of them. The five elements all relate to empowerment, which is difficult to establish in a hierarchal workplace. Engagement is understood by the organisations as connection and trust while unified under a single brand. With the advent of the new internal communication tools, those in the organisations are able to participate in a network if they choose to. However, the second section demonstrates that, in order for workplace democracy to be achieved, employers and employees need to take responsibility

beyond their usual duties. Furthermore, the internal social media tool does not implement workplace democracy right away. It may help the users to do so, but it is the choice of the management whether to use it to connect with others or to increase working hours.