ABSTRACT
A belief in the virtues of democratic control is anchored in fundamental human values which pervade most industrial societies. Widely advocated as a solution to alienation, for optimizing individual freedom in a collective context, and as a means of obviating the undesirable effects of asymmetrical distributions of power (Poole, 1978), it has captured the imagination of the reformer seeking to eradicate latent and manifest conflicts in the work process itself. But common pressures have had multiple institutional consequences, for the machinery for industrial democracy (designed to accommodate interests in the production sphere) is richly heterogeneous in type.
