ABSTRACT
The long-standing Scandinavian urge to experiment with social institutions is now so intensely focused on the workplace that, once again and in still another area, that part of the world has become a laboratory for the testing of new ideas. Meanwhile, on the international level, the Norwegian experiments are well known in the rest of Scandinavia and are commonly cited, especially in Sweden, as either the inspiration for or a factor contributing to the launching of a wide variety of novel experiments. Nationally, Denmark has not advanced the idea of industrial democracy anywhere near the degree to which it is being promoted in Sweden or Norway. The Arvika experiment adopted ideas from earlier trials in Norway and elsewhere, and added touches of its own. The experiment began informally when it was observed that the workers in the crating and dispatching department seemed to work better when they were not being closely supervised.
