Hi Harold,

Thanks for the blog post and mention. As you may have seen on our website, two representatives from Point B spoke at the last WorldBlu Live conference in 2005 held in Washington, DC. And yes, they do seem to be a model of organizational democracy. They were not on this year’s WorldBlu List because they did not apply due to other awards that they were applying for this past year instead. Hopefully they will apply in the future.

I’m most interested in your assertion, however, as to why the companies on the WorldBlu List aren’t democratic — what makes you say that? What evidence do you have? What is your definition of democracy?

In order for the organizations to make the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces they have to be practicing the ten principles that create a democratic system on three levels — a leadership level, an individual level and a systems and processes level. You can view the full list of principles by clicking here http://worldblu.com/scorecard/question2.php and more about the criteria by clicking here http://worldblu.com/scorecard/question1.php.

Employees in the organization complete a survey to determine if the organization is democratic, a survey that was developed based on a decade of research into what makes a democratic organization. It’s a very high bar and as far as I know no other organization has developed such a comprehensive standard for identifying democratic workplaces.

I hope this helps to clarify.

BTW — Thanks Jon for the apology and your blog post. ;-)