One buried clause names democracy as the precondition for workplace participation

Evidence

Further: the quality of behavioural modes such as those that constituted the atmosphere in a company was only conceivable in terms of a living relation to the quality of the stimulus to which reactions were occurring. An idea that hinted at the missing social and historical dimension was buried in a subordinate clause: notions of being represented by qualified people which had appeared in connection with the topic of workers’ participation, and the element of apathy, both developed in many ways `where fundamentally democratic conditions are not present’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 514

Categorization

• DEFINE: The category ‘atmosphere of the workplace’ is technically defined here as a living relation between behavior and stimulus rather than a sum of attitudes — the conceptual hinge the Mannesmann study kept vague.
• XREF: Links to the Frankfurt School’s broader claim that the Institute’s conceptual apparatus was exported wholesale into American industrial research — see earlier chapters on the Institute’s American exile and the AJC studies. — connects to: Working democratic procedures require an underlying democratic ethos rather than standing alone — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 315; Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 247
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Working democratic procedures require an underlying democratic ethos rather than standing alone — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 315; Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 247