Varieties of industrial democracy – beyond neoliberalism or not? The Special Issue Editors’ response essay

We, the co-editors of this Special Issue, aim to promote the expansion of organizational democracy within the global industrial system as a superior and more humane alternative to a neoliberal model incapable of seeing beyond short-term profit-maximizing no matter what the human or environmental cost. We want to reinforce dialogue and debates about the possibilities of sustaining and expanding industrial democracy and therefore social democratic institutions that are under sustained attack by the current neoliberal domination of the global economy. To support this effort, we asked three well-known experts on industrial democracy and on Action Research to write comment essays in response to our comparative paper. We proposed the following issues as guidance to the respondents and were fortunate in receiving thoughtful and challenging responses from all three.