Member participation in cooperatives: expectations, practices and outcomes.

Fung (2005) says that we become better citizens if we deliberate more. In today’s world, however, enterprises as politicized actors have become the context in which citizens cease to be citizens and become stakeholders (Ferreras, 2017). In order to advance our understanding of deliberation in that context, I have attempted to provide some building blocks required to finish what many have labeled as Habermas’ unfinished project. By exploring what “voice” means in the context of deliberation between stakeholders and organizations, I have challenged and nuanced four assumptions in our field. by drawing on the rich empirical context of cooperative enterprises. First, voice mechanisms in the economic sphere are not only useful in case of market exploitation, but also functional in times of crisis and when non-economic value requirements are at stake. Second, democratic deficits cannot simply be solved by adding formal decision rights such as elections and voting rights: they have to be understood in the larger cultural practice in which they are embedded. Third, while good representation has often been associated with a conscious attitude of representing and an explicit accountability link with regards to a constituency, alternative selection methods may also steer good representative behavior without these two requirements. Last, while we often project a liberal idea of democratic decision-making to make organizations more accountable to stakeholders, deliberation can also exist separately or jointly with formal decision rights and be rendered effective.