Nothing happens in isolation. Organizational democracy is no exception. To make sense of today’s trends towards organizational democracy, it helps to understand some of the historical context surrounding the evolution of the modern corporation from a command-and-control structure towards a more democratic design. Undoubtedly, countless books, articles, and even movies have explored the evolution of the modern-day company. Here, we offer you our (condensed) perspective:

The modern corporation was originally conceived as a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy. But this was an historical accident.

At the turn of the 20th century, when the modern corporation was born and an organizational structure was needed, there were few clear examples to follow but the mechanistic model of the armed forces. According to management guru Peter Drucker, “The only permanent organization around was the army. Not surprisingly, therefore, its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who were putting together transcontinental railroads, steel mills, modern banks and department stores . . . [and this has] remained the norm for nearly one hundred years."

Interestingly, few corporations chose to take their cues on how to organize from other historically successful models of governance, such as the Native American Iroquois tribal structure (which dramatically influenced the US model of democracy). There were, however, a few exceptions. Alfred P. Sloan openly ran General Motors (GM) with a system of checks and balances based on those outlined in the United States Constitution. He used this method to create a corporate structure that encouraged creativity and initiative, which eventually propelled GM into phenomenal growth and success. But despite examples like GM, the majority of corporations were modeled after militaristic structures.

Over the decades, however, business owners and management theorists alike have gradually advocated a less hierarchical, more networked, and increasingly transparent organizational design as superior to command-and-control structures. W. Edwards Deming helped revolutionize Japan’s post-war economy with his dictum to include workers at the center of management decisions. And in their seminal study of great manufacturing firms around the world, Robert Hayes, Steven Wheelwright, and Kim Clark pointed out the power of cultivating leadership at every level of a company and the weaknesses of authoritarian structures and command-and-control management styles.

These developments in management thinking and practices coincided with dramatic changes and advances in our scientific understanding of how the natural world organizes itself. Albert Einstein began to poke holes in the Newtonian concept of the universe ticking like a gigantic timepiece or well-oiled machine, instead suggesting that time and space were much more dynamic and unpredictable. And biologists were discovering that Mother Nature organizes herself into adaptable, "living systems.” Our view of how life organizes itself was being reconceived.

Business leaders are now finding that command-and-control structures simply aren’t relevant or even robust enough for today's economic, social, and political climates. Around the world, business leaders are increasingly searching for answers to timeless business questions in a remarkably new business context: “How do we improve our ability to adjust to market changes? How do we harness the rapid advance of technology? How do we increase productivity? How do we attract and retain the brightest talent? How do we grow?”

The possible solution? Organizational democracy.

A democratic organizational system, which by design is more like living system models we see operating in the universe. A democratic organizational system, which by design is more like a living system in alignment with the natural organizing tendencies of the universe, can deal with the complexity, the nuances, the decentralization of events and information in a way that command-and-control structures simply cannot.

Companies have largely outgrown the usefulness of control-based models of organization today. Organizational democracy is the next evolutionary step.