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Organization and Participation. Aspects of a Dialectical Relationship

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Institutions and Organizations as Learning Environments for Participation and Democracy

Abstract

The paper discusses the reciprocal relation between organization and participation. Modern society depends on organizations even though, and precisely because, they simultaneously constrain and enable opportunities for individuals. Individual demands for societal participation are referred to participation in organizations and are also generally realized in an organized form. Claims to individual participation can only be enforced in a rationally expectable and verifiable way through order-forming procedures. Normative ideas of participation, which proclaim societal participation as simple taking part but dispense with the articulation of comprehensible, i.e., regular, offers of implementation, oppose such a logic of proceduralism. Participatory procedures in organizations, however, become part of a functional context in that they serve the organizational structure building and, in particular, the structure-guided generation of productive variations. Organization and individual are mutually dependent on each other and together constitute the dialectic of modern society. In conclusion, the relationship between organization and participation is discussed as a fundamental educational problem as well as a teaching task of organizational education.

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Wendt, T., Manhart, S. (2022). Organization and Participation. Aspects of a Dialectical Relationship. In: Spannring, R., Smidt, W., Unterrainer, C. (eds) Institutions and Organizations as Learning Environments for Participation and Democracy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17949-5_11

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