Commons Paradigm: Embedding Common Good and Collective Action

1. Commons Paradigm: Embedding Common Good and Collective Action Laura Albareda laura.Albareda@lut.fi Associate Professor School of Business and Management LUT University Finland Alejo Jose G, Sison ajsison@unav.es Professor School of Economics and Business, University of Navarre Spain

2. Commons organizing • In recent years, business ethics and entrepreneurship scholars have paid increasing attention to the language of the commons and the common good (Bollier 2007; Mele 2009, 2012; Meyer and Hudon 2018; Sison and Fontrodona 2012, 2013). • To explain this, Bollier (2007, p. 28) refers to the growth of a commons paradigm

3. New organizing models • New concepts and practices related to new commons in pursuit of the common good (Sison, 2007). • Growing of new forms of organizing guided by producing and sustaining commons into the markets. • Scholars have identified new organizing models: • community-based enterprises (Peredo and Chrisman, 2006, Haugh, 2007) • commoning (Fournier, 2013; Bollier and Helrich, 2012; Meyer and Hudon, 2018) • commons-based peer production (Benkler and Nissenbaum, 2006) • the common good of the firm (Sison and Fontrodona, 2012, 2013; Mele, 2012)

5. Multiple phenomena: • common enterprises transforming sustainable food systems (e.g., self-organized community gardens, self-organized families ordering organic products from farmers) • community land and housing initiatives (e.g., community land trust) • community-based enterprises energy initiatives (e.g., self-organized cooperatives for producing and using renewable energy in cities), • commoning in finance (e.g., community currencies, community development banks), • commons-based peer production systems in knowledge commons • community-based enterprises for sharing mobility systems (e.g., community car sharing; cycling sharing) • urban commons initiatives (e.g., community charters for managing collective assets, participatory budgeting, urban land trust to make housing available, multi-stakeholder cooperative for social services) Commons organizing

6. Commons organizing - definition • A process of experimenting new organizational designs that promote collective forms of resource ownership and management in pursuit of the common good. • Commons organizing explains how different types of communities (e.g., face-to-face communities, indigenous communities, urban communities, digital communities) including both homogeneous and heterogeneous people are able to self-organize framing cooperative "models of social relationships in which the commons goods are (re)produced, and their use value is distributed” (De Angelis, 2017, p. 1), and expanded to large generative networks.

7. Goal • We study two separated literatures that have gained prominence in the last decades. • The ethical approach • The economic approach • Our goal is to understand the differences between the ethical and economic approach. • Although they have emerged and evolved independently, and mainly remain disconnected, they build on a similar research question: how commons goods and the common good explain new forms of commons organizing. • A set of concepts and theories that constitute a legitimate contribution to understanding the commons organizing

8. This re-emergence of the long tradition of commons • Supported by two scientific approaches • Common good – What is shared and beneficial for the well-being of all members of a community • Collective action and “new commons” –the ability of communities of people adopting new practices of use, production, distribution, sharing or circulation of commons resources (e.g., sharing water management, avoiding food waste, promoting co-housing) and work in common generating new market-based solutions to the common good (Bollier, 2007). • The emergence of the commons organizing paradigm striving to achieve a coherent understanding that aligns ethical and economic principles.

9. Promoted by business ethics scholars working on the principle of the common good (Argandoña, 1998; O’Brien, 2009; Mele, 2009) • Supporting the “theory of the common good of the firm” (Mele, 2012; Sison and Fontrodona, 2012, 2013). • Common good - human beings as political citizens sharing what is beneficial for all the members of a given community (Aristotle, 1948). • Teleological dimension: a final cause toward which all society is aiming (O’Brien, 2008). • Practical lens - citizens, participating in societal institution (e.g., the family, the low, the State) could discern and deliberate between what is good for the community and, what is bad and destroys social value (Mele, 2009). • Individuals are embedded in networks of societal relationships, mainly communities, searching for human flourishing (Fremeaux and Michelson, 2017; O’Brien, 2008). • Virtue Ethics scholars have adapted Aristotle’ concept through the work of Aquinas and Catholic Social Thought (CST).

10. Theory of the common good of the firm • Aspirational perspective – to the firm • Personalist approach - every human being must be treated as a person with distinct personal goals. • Four dimensions: • Business are communities of human beings that work in common. Work in common is the reason why people come together to an organization • Businesses are communities in which all members participate producing products and services that society needs (the objective dimension), but also offers employees, managers to flourish through the development of skills, virtues and meaning (the subjective dimension). • the common good of the firm is based on human beings searching for human dignity and personal flourishing. It support Humanistic Management (Mele, 2009,2012). • The principle of subsidiarity - how the lower level, the individual and the firm as a community, can overcome by elevation to higher order goods, the society

11. Collective action and commons

12. A taxonomy of economic goods Rivalry in consumption: consumptiondimishesother’sconsumption Excludability of use and consumption: Ability to preventothersfromconsumption Neoclassical economy (Samuelson, 1954;)

13. Principles of Institutions for collective action 1. Define clear group boundaries 2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions. 3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules. 4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities. 5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior. 6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators. 7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution. 8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

14. In recent years, towards new commons • Resources connected to grand societal challenges - sustainable development, climate change, urban development, open scientific knowledge, community development, education or unemployment and ethical financing. • Different categories: infrastructure commons (ICT, transportation), markets as commons (capitalism, gift economies, financial commons and exchanges commons), neighborhood commons (security, streets, homelessness and housing), medical commons (health care), cultural commons (music, art, not-for profits and sports) and knowledge commons (digital divide, education, IPRs, internet and libraries). • They cover needs that cannot be enhanced by public regulation, and privately owned and managed by large corporations and guided by the rules of market economy • An emancipatory approach – transform capitalism New commons as social systems

15. Complex self-organizing Commoning Commons as a social system (De Angelis, 2017) • 1) a pool of material and immaterial resources; • 2) a community of people (commoners) who share, produce, reproduce and claim these resources; • 3) the commoning as a practice of doing in common through which communities produce and reproduce and sustain (sustainability) collective resources and the social organization and social labor to use, produce and reproduce, distribute and circulate these resources. Polycentric governance • Polycentricity refers to the capacity to expand collective action beyond local communities • Polycentric systems enhance the coexistence of multiple and disperse self-organized centers and networks of decision-making at multiple levels of action (local, national, transnational) that are formally independent of each other, but are able to operate under an overarching set of rules (Ostrom, 2010).

16. Theory understanding how communities build their enterprises to organize for producing new products and services while work for the common good of all members of the community (Peredo and Chrisman, 2006; Haugh, 2007; Berkes and Davidson-Hunt, 2010) • CBE literature emerged along the fringes between entrepreneurial studies and non-profit research (Haugh, 2007). • Main dimensions of CBE(Peredo and Chrisman, 2006). • Community a joint collective actor to enact new entrepreneurial models. • CBE are driven by sharing community-based common resources • CBE adopt a community logic • CBE relay on their own available community skills and knowledge, and on community participation and social capital • CBE are based on community participative governance structures which includes community-based assemblies and board of trustees, inclusive and involving main representative of all different community members. Community-based enterprise

18. Logics and patterns of experimentation • Commons organizing model based on the complexity of three main logics. • Analyzing the interlinkages between these logics we identify five patterns of experimentation. Commons organizing model

19. Logics Common good logic 1) flourishing of the community and wellbeing individuals 2) human dignity, cooperation and solidarity 3) work in common 4) subsidiarity Community logic 1) responding to community needs and build on community skills 2) community acting cooperatively in pursue of common good/value creation 3) community ownership, governance and management community skills Collective action logic 1) social process that allow people to participate in the design of collective action organizing practices 2) commoning: the social praxis of doing in common create and reproduce common resources. 3) polycentricity - multiple organizations are able to interact though uncoordinated processes of interconnections, but a set of overarching rules

20. Patterns of commons organizing experimentation

21. Discussion • Convergence between the ethic and economic sources on the development of the commons organizing theory • We expands the understanding of commons organizing by studying a comprehensive model with three main logics and fifth commons experimenting patterns that are able to generate a new form of organizing

22. Contribution • We argue that, although both approaches have important differences regarding the understanding of human beings and the role of business in society, they both develop the main logics to understand commons organizing as a different logic of for-profit organizing and pro-social organizing. • We understand how Ostrom’s theory of collective action can contribute to business ethics and the discussion of business and the common good • We study divergences between the aspirational approach of the virtue ethics and the emancipatory approach of collective action.

23. Many thanks