IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trn/utwpde/1112.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The firm as a common. The case of accumulation and use of common resources in mutual benefit organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Ermanno C. Tortia

Abstract

Common resources are quasi-public resources, which are rivaled but non excludable in consumption or in appropriation. While the exploitation of common resources has been widely studied in the literature originated by Elinor Ostron�s works (starting from 1990), the study of common resources inside entrepreneurial organization in not sufficiently developed to date. This paper establishes three dimensions that highlight the relevance of the communality of resources in entrepreneurial organizations: the accumulation and use of common capital resources owned by the organization; the distribution of a rivaled, but non excludable value added among the controlling patrons; and the management of common non-owned resources (for example natural resources) by the organization. The first theme is selected and developed further. Cooperative firms are introduced are instance of ownership form that appears, historically and institutionally, to be particularly keen to accumulate, use, distribute common resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Ermanno C. Tortia, 2011. "The firm as a common. The case of accumulation and use of common resources in mutual benefit organizations," Department of Economics Working Papers 1112, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    • Handle: RePEc:trn:utwpde:1112
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unitn.it/files/download/15312/1211tortia.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Silvia Sacchetti & Ermanno C. Tortia, 2010. "A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF COOPERATIVE FIRMS: Self-defined rules, common resources, motivations, and incentives," Econometica Working Papers wp21, Econometica.
    3. Pencavel, John & Craig, Ben, 1994. "The Empirical Performance of Orthodox Models of the Firm: Conventional Firms and Worker Cooperatives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 718-744, August.
    4. Carlo Borzaga, 2013. "Social enterprise," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise, chapter 32, pages 318-326, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Guy MAJOR, 1996. "Solving The Underinvestment And Degeneration Problems Of Workers' Cooperatives," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(4), pages 545-601, December.
    6. Oded Stark, 1990. "A Relative Deprivation Approach to Performance Incentives in Career Games and Other Contests," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 211-227, May.
    7. Gregory Dow, 1996. "Replicating Walrasian equilibria using markets for membership in labor-managed firms," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 2(1), pages 147-162, December.
    8. Dow, Gregory K, 1993. "Why Capital Hires Labor: A Bargaining Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 118-134, March.
    9. Bruno Jossa & Gaetano Cuomo, 1997. "The Economic Theory of Socialism and the Labour-managed Firm," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1091, December.
    10. Hansmann, Henry, 1988. "Ownership of the Firm," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 267-304, Fall.
    11. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    12. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2006. "Economics in the Shadows of Darwin and Marx," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3925, December.
    13. Dow,Gregory K., 2003. "Governing the Firm," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521818537, June.
    14. Levine, David I., 1991. "Cohesiveness, productivity, and wage dispersion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 237-255, March.
    15. Frank, Robert H, 1984. "Are Workers Paid Their Marginal Products?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 549-571, September.
    16. Kruse, Douglas L, 1992. "Profit Sharing and Productivity: Microeconomic Evidence from the United States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(410), pages 24-36, January.
    17. Podivinsky, Jan M. & Stewart, Geoff, 2007. "Why is labour-managed firm entry so rare?: An analysis of UK manufacturing data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 177-192, May.
    18. Adhikari, Bhim, 2005. "Poverty, property rights and collective action: understanding the distributive aspects of common property resource management," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 7-31, February.
    19. Craig Ben & Pencavel John, 1993. "The Objectives of Worker Cooperatives," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 288-308, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sacchetti, Silvia & Tortia, Ermanno, 2012. "The internal and external governance of cooperatives: the effective membership and consistency of value," AICCON Working Papers 111-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    2. Tortia, Ermanno & Valentinov, Vladislav & Iliopoulos, Constantine, 2013. "Agricultural cooperatives," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 2(1), pages 23-36.
    3. Ermanno Tortia & Martha Knox Haly & Anthony Jensen, 2014. "Workers' propensity to cooperate with colleagues and the general population: a comparison based on a field experiment," Econometica Working Papers wp52, Econometica.
    4. Tortia, Ermanno & Knox Haly, Martha & Jensen, Anthony, 2013. "From the Neoliberal to the Participatory Firm," AICCON Working Papers 130-2013, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tortia, Ermanno, 2014. "L'impresa come bene comune," AICCON Working Papers 131-2013, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    2. Dow,Gregory K., 2019. "The Labor-Managed Firm," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107589650, June.
    3. Gregory K. DOW, 2018. "The Theory Of The Labor-Managed Firm: Past, Present, And Future," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(1), pages 65-86, March.
    4. Ermanno C. Tortia, 2018. "The Firm as a Common. Non-Divided Ownership, Patrimonial Stability and Longevity of Co-Operative Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-18, March.
    5. repec:bla:annpce:v:89:y:2018:i:1:p:65-86 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2017. "The firm as a common. The case of the accumulation and use of capital resources in co-operative enterprises," MPRA Paper 76735, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Tortia, Ermanno, 2005. "The accumulation of Capital in Labour-Managed Firms: Divisible Reserves and Bonds," AICCON Working Papers 23-2005, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    8. Cecilia Navarra & Ermanno Tortia, 2014. "Employer Moral Hazard, Wage Rigidity, and Worker Cooperatives: A Theoretical Appraisal," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 707-726.
    9. Navarra Cecilia & Tortia Ermanno, 2011. "Employer’s moral hazard and the emergence of worker cooperatives," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201103, University of Turin.
    10. Gabriel Burdín, 2016. "Equality Under Threat by the Talented: Evidence from Worker‐Managed Firms," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(594), pages 1372-1403, August.
    11. Mill�n D�az-Foncea & Carmen Marcuello, 2014. "The Relation between Total Employment and Cooperative Employment: A Convergence and Causality Analysis," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 71-92, March.
    12. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2008. "Worker well-being and perceived fairness: Survey-based findings from Italy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 2080-2094, October.
    13. Carlo Borzaga & Ermanno Tortia, 2004. "Worker involvement in entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations. Toward a new assessment of workers' perceived satisfaction and fairness," Department of Economics Working Papers 0409, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    14. Dean, Andrés, 2019. "Do successful worker-managed firms degenerate?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 317-329.
    15. Leete, Laura, 2000. "Wage equity and employee motivation in nonprofit and for-profit organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 423-446, December.
    16. Sacchetti, Silvia & Tortia, Ermanno, 2012. "The internal and external governance of cooperatives: the effective membership and consistency of value," AICCON Working Papers 111-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    17. Emily Breza & Supreet Kaur & Yogita Shamdasani, 2018. "The Morale Effects of Pay Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 611-663.
    18. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2021. "Employment protection regimes and dismissal of members in worker cooperatives," MPRA Paper 109214, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Guillermo Alves & Gabriel Burdin & Paula Carrasco & Andrés Dean & Andrés Rius, 2012. "Empleo, remuneraciones e inversión en cooperativas de trabajadores y empresas convencionales: nueva evidencia para Uruguay," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 12-14, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    20. Alves, Guillermo & Blanchard, Pablo & Burdin, Gabriel & Chávez, Mariana & Dean, Andrés, 2022. "Like principal, like agent? Managerial preferences in employee-owned firms," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(6), pages 877-899, December.
    21. Fabio Sabatini & Francesca Modena & Ermanno Tortia, 2014. "Do cooperative enterprises create social trust?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 621-641, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    common resources; rivalry; non-excludability; entrepreneurial organizations; accumulation; cooperative firms;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:trn:utwpde:1112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Luciano Andreozzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detreit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.