Organisational democracy

Abstract

Organisations are both sociological and psychological structures since they have relations with a wide environment such as government, state, suppliers, financiers, partners, competitors and national/international society and have a structure containing human factor. While the relations of the organisation with its environment bring a sociological character, the psychological quality emerges rather as a result of focusing on the organisation-employee relationship. One of the issues addressed in the organisation-employee relationship is the concept of “organisational democracy” explaining the democratic practices in the organisation. It would be appropriate to assert that this concept first appeared in Paris towards the late 19th century. After a while, this practice in organisations have started to be used in many countries for reasons such as the proliferation of socio-cultural developments and the improvement of communication possibilities with technology. Detailed information about the concept will be mentioned in the following sections. In the general view of a century ago, employees were considered as a machine for organisations and the fact that they were social beings were being ignored. With the changes in organisational structures and the implementation of organisational democracy in organisations, employees had some rights within the organisation over time. The organisation-employee relationship has changed together with organisational democracy. It can be said that with organisational democracy, employees have gained some rights such as participating in organisational decisions, criticising the organisation policies, accessing information in the organisation in a timely manner, demanding a fair duty distribution, demanding to be equally treated about promotion, and accounting for administrative activities. Hospitals are differentiated from many organisations since they are the institutions where occupational group having many different expertise renders service together and continuously. Organisation-employee fit is very important in order for the hospitals to carry on their activities effectively in organisational sense. From this point of view, organisational democracy practices we think that they have a positive effect on organisation-employee fit have a special importance for hospitals.