About
Effective management unlocks talent and distributes leadership, increases job satisfaction, and cultivates collaboration in the workplace. The School for Democratic Management gives you tools you can use right away to build the culture that your company needs. Democratic management is committed to high levels of participation, not as an option but an imperative.
Learn from EXPERTS
Our School is unique in the field of management training; instructors are current and former managers of successful companies with employee ownership, as well as consultants who work with them. We work closely with our instructors to identify key lessons and tools for actualizing company values. Content is practically oriented to be short yet intensive, covering best practices from a range of companies and industries.
Our framework
Courses are structured around four core elements of a democratic workplace:
Financial Return: employees seeing the rewards of financial success
Information Sharing: empowering employees to participate
Power Sharing: everyone is clear about who makes what decisions and why
Human Development: democracy requires developing capacity
Our mentors and advisors
The School’s design and content draws from the research and practice of experts in the field:
Open Book Management as articulated in Jack Stack's The Great Game of Business
The theories of Chris Mackin, honed through his consulting practice, Ownership Associates
Paul Bernstein in his seminal book, Workplace Democratization
The ICA Group's accessible work on Democratic Governance
Advisors in the launch of the School include: Rob Brown, Cooperative Development Institute; Aaron Dawson, Industrial Commons; Molly Hemstreet, Opportunity Threads; Karla Reyes, Dreamco Marketing & Consulting; and Ginny Vanderslice, Praxis Consulting Group.
Our mandate to educate workers for democracy comes from the late Frank Adams, author of Putting Democracy to Work. This School draws inspiration, too, from the Work People’s College of the early 20th century, which was formed by workers to teach workers how to manage their own companies.
Worker Cooperatives and Organizations We’ve Helped
Improve Democratic Management
The School for Democratic Management is a program of the Democracy at Work Institute in partnership with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives