Managing Without Managers

Semco S/A is a manufacturing company in Brazil where workers make corporate decisions, set their own hours, and have access to monthly financial figures. The company's management philosophy is antihierarchical and perhaps unorthodox, but its profits are handsome. The company operates on the basis of three key principles: work force democracy, profit sharing, and free access to information. Democracy lets employees set their own working conditions; profit sharing rewards them for doing well; information tells them how they are doing.