This document discusses building companies of citizens beyond employee empowerment. It summarizes the successful democratic system used in ancient Athens and argues modern companies still have hierarchical structures and governance systems from the industrial age. The author advocates adopting participatory structures, communal values, and engagement practices seen in Athens to foster long-term employee loyalty and embrace of company interests, rather than today's focus on short-term employability. Specifically, Athens had flat governance, values balancing individuality and community, and practices ensuring access, process, and consequences engaged citizens. The document argues the Athenian model provides a window into self-governance but not simple prescriptions, and requires a coherent system combining structures, values and practices.

1. BEYOND EMPOWERMENT: BUILDING A COMPANY
OF CITIZENS
- BROOK MANVILLE
Submitted by
Abhinav K.P
MBA – A

2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Brook Manville is Principal of Brook Manville,
LLC. His consulting work focuses on strategy,
organization development and transformation, and
executive leadership.
• Brook has a special expertise in knowledge
management, organizational learning, leadership
development and knowledge-based strategies; he
also serves as an executive coach to a wide range of
leaders.
• Brook spent a major part of his career as a partner
at McKinsey & Company, specializing in
organizational development and knowledge-related
strategy.
• Brook holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale (1979)
and undergraduate degrees in classics from Oxford
(1975) and Yale (1972).

3. BEYOND EMPOWERMENT: BUILDING
A COMPANY OF CITIZENS
 Corporate ownership structures, governance
systems, and incentive programs—despite the
enlightened rhetoric of business leaders—are still
firmly planted in the industrial age.
 Business organizations have become less
bureaucratic in recent years and that authority has
been pushed down through the ranks.
 Workers are able to make decisions about their
immediate jobs or to participate in somewhat
broader decisions about their own units, but they
still have little or no voice in decisions about the
direction of the overall company.

4. ARCHITECTURE OF CITIZENSHIP
Democracy of ancient Athens is successful:
* System was not imposed on the Athenian people
*System was holistic
Athenian democracy encompassed
*Participatory structures
*Set of communal values
*Array of practices

5. PARTICIPATORY STRUCTURES
 Governance had radically flat organization
 Every adult male Athenian had the opportunity to
attend the great citizen assembly
 To ensure that the decisions of the populace would
be executed swiftly and well
 Transparent procedural rules governed judicial and
policy-making processes, keeping them simple, fair,
and flexible

6.  People with expertise came forward
whenever their skills were needed,
without becoming part of any standing
bureaucracy?

7.  Communal Values:
 Establishing democratic structures is not enough, of course
 A distinctive set of values made the personal communal
and the communal personal
 A second set of Athenian values, balancing those that
focused on individuality, centered on community

8. How many knowledge workers today
would automatically embrace the
company’s interest as their own?

9.  Two significant differences between the modern
concept of employability and the Athenian concept of
moral reciprocity:
*Employability does not foster long-term loyalty
*Employability contracts and moral reciprocity is
less obvious

10. PRACTICES OF ENGAGEMENT
 An organization’s practices define its culture, how
work gets done.
 Practices of access
 Practices of process
 Practices of consequences

11. LOOKING AHEAD
 Athenian model of organizational democracy is just that
a model
 Does not provide a simple set of prescriptions for
modern managers
 It offers a window into how sizable groups of people can
successfully govern themselves
 It shows the need to combine structures, values, and
practices in a coherent, self-sustaining system

12. THANK YOU……….