ABSTRACT
Summary: The growth of industrial democracy in various forms poses a major educational challenge. There is a tension between the need to enable participants to learn the ‘rules’ of policy-making in the enterprise and the need to change those rules in accordance with the changing distribution of power. A further dilemma derives from the importance of allowing students to define their own learning needs without abandoning the responsibility for providing education in a systematic and effective fashion. The role of ‘experts’ such as accountants is sure to be called into question, and this may lead to a scrutiny of the whole basis of such expertise. Four broad groups of skills are identified as necessary for effective participation in decision-making: procedural, technical, micro-level policy-making and macro-level policy-making. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the implications of the democratization of work for the construction and dissemination of knowledge.
