Democratic World Café

The Private Sector is often viewed as apolitical or relatively hesitant to engage with political issues. Contrary to the common perception of political engagement as indoctrination, from our perspective, it serves as a means to foster idea facilitation, civic involvement, and a sense of civic responsibility. Recognizing political engagement as a positive force is crucial, challenging existing undemocratic norms and paving the way for the emergence of a comprehensive democratic culture. By encouraging political engagement within the private sector, we aim to reshape perceptions and contribute to the development of a corporate environment that values diverse perspectives, active civic participation, and a commitment to democratic principles.

As the title of the proposal signifies, the methodology of the “World Café” will be implemented. The World Café methodology is a collaborative and participatory approach to group discussions and idea generation. It involves participants moving between small, informal group settings to discuss a central topic or question, with each group being moderated by an individual from a third party, such as a facilitator from either the Public Sector or an Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the trusted parties or entities that sign a data protection agreement and agree on the collaboration terms before proceeding to actual endeavours. There has been an increased trend of involving public, non-governmental and private in joint endeavours, such as charity projects or wide-scale CSR-related opportunities, and offering an official platform for those parties to collaborate on democratic issues is an opportunity to add value to already-existing partnerships. Each group contributes insights and ideas, and participants switch groups periodically, building upon previous discussions. The process encourages diverse perspectives, fosters open dialogue, and promotes the exploration of a topic from various angles, leading to a rich exchange of ideas and collective knowledge. All the participants subsequently assemble, which is followed by the presentation and discussion of all the different proposals, followed by discussion, assessment and implementation.

However, this interdepartmental approach is only applicable when cooperating with larger enterprises. Therefore, we have developed another approach with the implementation of the World Café within Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Instead of inviting workers from different departments within the same enterprise, we would seek to bring together workers from different enterprises, ideally from the same sectors (e.g. agricultural, retail … ), or with different SMEs located within the same geographical district. This would allow the World Café to be implemented for all sizes of enterprises, not only being reserved for those large enough to encompass several differing departments.

To eliminate the possibility of fears arising on the side of the Private Sector participants, we form the participating groups by inviting members from different departments presented in a company. If people from different departments with varying scope of responsibilities and backgrounds gather together to engage in specific problem-solving activities, the participants are expected to feel freer to share specific opinions on a certain topic. We encourage a non-violent communication approach to further eliminate any potential interpersonal conflicts and fears stemming from reprisals from workers higher up the hierarchy.

The target group for the Democratic World Café for the Private Sector would be both SMEs and larger companies, with the methodology being scalable, grounded and executable on several different types of enterprises. Even so, the proposal involves several different stakeholders. Clearly, the enterprises themselves play a crucial role in addition to the employees, but the facilitators of the World Café should be either from the Public Sector or an NGO unaffiliated to the enterprise(s) in question.