Is agility an opportunity for a new attempt towards a democratic company?

Abstract

There has been a long-standing discussion since the 1980s about the question whether new production models harbor a potential for extended employee participation and involvement, in most cases with disillusioning results. This paper is concerned with so called “agile methods”, which play an important part in the area of knowledge work in the course of the digital transformation. On the basis of two case studies from software development and industrial R&D, the paper examines the concrete implementation of these methods and the employees’ perspective upon them and their consequences. The result is that agile methods present a potential for extended employee participation and involvement; however, the realization of this potential depends on the concrete way how the agile concept of “empowerment” is implemented.