[p2p-research] Your Swarm Registration / enterprise p2p governance

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Henrik:

I think you hit the nail on the head with your explanation of why there is a
fundamental contradiction for the peer to peer governance of corporations.

Can we imagine market vehicles which are not subjected to the feudal
constraints, and financial dependency, of the corporate format?

Can we imagine new forms of ownership that act in a distributed fashion,
creating a pseudo-commons or a quasi-commons, i.e. in which power is not
concentrated and does not act as a restraint for free cooperation.

I think also there is another major stumbling block: nl. that operating in a
market requires cost recovery, and hence many requirements for conditional
delivery of work, again incompatible with the self-unfolding nature of peer
production.

All of this does not mean of course, that hybrid models are possible in
which the corporate format tries to incorporate aspects of participation, as
long as it stays under its control.

I have create a hierarchy of engagement between communities and companies,
which has at least 10 different possibilities, all requiring different forms
of governance:

See

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/what-kind-of-economy-are-we-moving-to-3-a-hierarchy-of-engagement-between-companies-and-communities/2007/10/05

On Dec 26, 2007 10:20 PM, Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi> wrote:

> I believe the the "underlying theme of power" is exactly the right
> place to start such a research and will boldly advertise two of my own
> links, second of which is from our Nottingham workshop:
> http://openlife.cc/node/49
> http://openlife.cc/DirectDemocracy#comment
>
> And continuing again with a short armchair analysis of mine... From
> this it follows that a modern enterprise is not well suited for  a p2p
> governance model, because in commercial enterprises aka as companies
> the power by definition lies solely within its owners ("hegemony of
> the owner"). Therefore the balance from "community voting with its
> feet" is lacking. By this logic even if a company was seemingly
> governed by a p2p process, in reality it would only be at the grace of
> the owners, who at any time could take back the power they had decided
> to give to the p2p process. (To be continued below...)
>
> In contrast the problem of an enterprise acting as an agent within a
> larger p2p system is more easy to approach and as a rule of thumb I
> would suggest that such a situation is not so different from when
> individual persons act in a p2p governed system. For instance, a
> company such as IBM will decide to voluntarily spend its resources on
> Apache or Linux projects, without any contractual guarantee to receive
> anything in return. This is completely equivalent to an individual
> person choosing to participate in such a project. OTOH even this is
> not an easy task for many companies, for instance internal processes
> for many companies I know would make it impossible for them to really
> participate in the blogosphere, because the company culture is such
> that employees writing uncensored statements in public is unthinkable.
> (Even if the company allowed it, many employees would not dare to
> actually write anything more interesting or useful than the average
> company press release.)
>
> Also enterprises other than commercial companies (like a non-profit or
> a chess club, say) could be more easily governed by a p2p process,
> since they don't have owners in that sense to begin with. In
> particular, such an enterprise might incorporate in its bylaws some
> clauses which would enable easy forking. Yet even then such an
> enterprise will probably govern some scarce material goods which
> cannot be forked.
>
> (And now back to our main story of commercial companies...) So to have
> truly p2p governed commercial companies we must come up with a way to
> shift the balance of power from "hegemony of the owners" to a more
> balanced situation where power is distributed with the owners,
> employees, customers etc... We could start by questioning the hegemony
> of the owners directly, is it a true view of a commercial company, or
> is it just something our society is falsely taking for granted? While
> it is true that the employer has tremendous power of the employee, in
> practice it would be terrible for the company if a majority of its
> employees revolted against the employer. Similarly if even a
> significant minority of the customers are unhappy with a company. So
> maybe there is more balance than we think? On the other hand it is in
> our society seen ethically ok currently for the employer to restrict
> the power of its employees, in particular "forking" of a company can
> be contractually restricted by having employees accept non-competing
> agreements. (Whereas a Free Software license for instance, enables and
> almost encourages forking.)
>
> As an illustrative example to help me get to my point, consider the
> military in a modern western state. Arguably, if the Finnish army
> decided to take power in Finland, they would technically be able to do
> so. (Although, the US adventure ini Iraq proves it is not as easy as
> you think and I might in fact be wrong on this point.) However, in no
> established western democracy is this at all likely to ever happen.
> This is because the values of the society and the military itself sees
> the military as subservient to democracy. So again, the question is:
> Could there be a way to start looking at modern commercial companies
> in a way where the balance of power is radically different from the
> current hegemony of owners? If not, then the second question is, how
> should society change its values and legislation on this issue, to
> better enable such a situation to come by.
>
> Finally of course there is the possibility of a future where
> commercial companies are not the primary vehicle driving society
> forward as they are today.
>
> henrik
>
>
> On Dec 25, 2007 10:30 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear friends,
> >
> > John Chu is doing research on corporate governance and will work
> > specifically on this section, see
> > http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Enterprise , together with Matthew
> > Cooperrider.
> >
> > Below is a particular question on how p2p governance tackles value
> > conflicts.
> >
> > Any contribution on this query would be most appreciated,
> >
> > Michel
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I have started reading up on the wealth of P2P materials. With my
> limited
> > understanding of corporate governance and governance in general whether
> > political, economic, etc., one issue that strikes me as important is the
> > fundamental underlying theme of power in terms of rule making and
> > enforcement which in turn are largely driven by human values (including
> > ethics and morals). I wonder whether it is a correct perspective to say
> that
> > one evaluation criterion of the merit of governance system is
> > > how it best cultivate, foster and protect the collectively desired
> human
> > values and decide the trade-off in such as and when required. Because if
> it
> > is so, then one aspect of advancing the cause of P2P governance would
> seem
> > to be a demonstration of how P2P system can better handle such an issue
> than
> > other alternatives. I wonder if there is any work on how P2P system
> and/or
> > view specify, operationalise and resolve the human values and their
> > conflicts?
> > >
> ...
>
>
>
> --
> email: henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
> tel:   +358-40-5697354
> www:   www.avoinelama.fi/~hingo <http://www.avoinelama.fi/%7Ehingo>
> book:  www.openlife.cc
>



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