The aim is to diversify societal representation within companies while enhancing their existing market economics.
The principles underpinning this are easy integration into the equity structure, open information rights and fair representation for relevant parties. This is enabled by automatic investment mechanisms, open information and equitable voting rights. The result is more democratically run, but capital-driven corporations.
As with national democracy, corporate democracy can take many forms. Companies may wish to increase the minimum membership fee or add eligibility criteria to suit their particular situation and extend or restrict their franchise. At first, restrictions are likely to start at a high level and reduce over time as processes for information distribution and collection improve.
Natural complaints include the administrative cost, educative burden and diversification of control. However, recent advances may mean that the administrative costs will be outweighed by the efficiencies, the educative burden is small and the majority may be able to provide a better return on capital than the individual. If this is the case, these companies will be comparatively successful and attract investors due to their outsize returns.
There is the historic precedent for more socially representative companies. Initially, corporations were formed with one-person-one-vote structures regardless of shareholding. However, this structure was replaced by today’s one share one vote system. Perhaps information asymmetries at the time meant a more democratic structure was less efficient, perhaps wealth consolidation was more socially acceptable, perhaps environmental collapse was less pressing.
Either way, the hypothesis is that times have now changed and a more diverse organisational structure presents benefits. A series of experiments should be able to find out relatively quickly: