Commons Organizing: Embedding Common Good and Institutions for Collective Action. Insights from Ethics and Economics
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Commons Organizing: Embedding Common Good and Institutions for Collective Action. Insights from Ethics and Economics Laura Albareda1 · Alejo Jose G. Sison2,3 Received: 14 December 2018 / Accepted: 16 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In recent years, business ethics and economic scholars have been paying greater attention to the development of commons organizing. The latter refers to the processes by which communities of people work in common in the pursuit of the common good. In turn, this promotes commons organizational designs based on collective forms of common goods production, distribution, management and ownership. In this paper, we build on two main literature streams: (1) the ethical approach based on the theory of the common good of the firm in virtue ethics and (2) the economic approach based on the theory of institutions for collective action developed by Ostrom’s research on common-pool resources to avert the tragedy of the commons. The latter expands to include the novel concepts of new commons, “commoning” and polycentric governance. Drawing on the analysis of what is new in these forms of organizing, we propose a comprehensive model, highlighting the integration of two sets of organizing principles—common good and collective action – and five problem-solving processes to explain the main dimensions of commons organizing. We contribute to business ethics literature by exploring the convergence between the ethical and economic approaches in the development of a commons organizing view. Keywords Common good · Commons · Institutions for collective action · Commons organizing · Commoning · Subsidiarity · Polycentricity · Community-based enterprise
Introduction In recent years, business ethics and economic scholars have paid increasing attention to “the language of the commons” (Fournier 2013; Mele 2012; Meyer and Hudon 2019; Sison and Fontrodona 2012). This is supported by research that identifies different theories, constructs and practices related to commons organizational designs. It refers to the research on people working in common in the pursuit of the common good (Sison 2007) and the development of collective forms of common goods production, distribution management and * Laura Albareda [email protected] Alejo Jose G. Sison [email protected] 1
School of Business and Management, LUT University, Yliopistonkatu 34, 53850 Lappeenranta, Finland
2
School of Economics and Business, University of Navarra, 31080 Pamplona, Spain
3
Busch School of Business, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
ownership (Hess 2008). To explain this, Bollier (2007, p. 28) refers to the growth of a “commons paradigm”. In this paper, we claim that the current re-emergence of the long tradition of “commons” phenomena has been studied and supported by two different scientific approaches. The first is the theory of the common good in business ethics (Argandoña 1998; O’Brien 2008) and the second is the study of institutions for collective action theory in new institutional
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