By Robert Link, 3 years 7 weeks ago.

Stakeholder Cooperation

Shann Turnbull
International Institute for Self-Governance

Journal of Cooperative Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 18-52, 1997

Abstract:
Some of the most successful businesses in the world involve employees, customers and suppliers in their control. This paper describes why this is so and how stakeholder governance could be introduced into English speaking countries. The competitive advantages of establishing co-operative relationships with stakeholders are illustrated by analyzing a Japanese Keiretsu and the stakeholder co-operatives found around the Spanish town of Mondragon. These are shown to share common features in their information and control architecture, which are also shared by all living things, which depend upon obtaining feedback information from their environment to exist. Elements of information theory, which is used to design self-regulating devices, are introduced to indicate how firms could be designed to mimic life forms to become self-regulating. Besides introducing competitive advantages, this would minimize both the internal and external costs of regulation. The paper recommends that governments provide leadership in introducing competitive self-regulation using the strategy proposed by the U.S. Vice President. The result would be to create a "Stakeholder Economy."

JEL Classifications: G3, K2, L2
Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: September 10, 1997 ; Last revised: January 05, 1998

Suggested Citation
Turnbull, Shann, Stakeholder Cooperation. Journal of Cooperative Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 18-52, 1997. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=26238 or doi:10.2139/ssrn.26238

By Robert Link, 3 years 7 weeks ago.

Cooperation Commons is pleased to announce a new initiative designed to both increase general knowledge of available literature and also to increase the inter-penetration of the Cooperation Commons with institutions.

By Robert Link, 3 years 40 weeks ago.

Follow CoCo on twitter.

By Robert Link, 3 years 40 weeks ago.

From the triple C home page:

The Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society provides a forum to discuss the challenges humanity is facing today.

It promotes contributions within an emerging science of the information age with a special interest in critical studies following the highest standards of peer review.

By Robert Link, 3 years 41 weeks ago.

From the text: "Reputation is a surrogate — a partial reflection representing our "best educated guess" of the underlying true state of affairs. Active evaluation by looking behind surface signals can corroborate or disprove reputations, while indiscriminate use degrades their reliability. The challenge is to encourage active evaluation,

By Robert Link, 3 years 42 weeks ago.

From the text: "...copying information actually multiplies the available resources, not only by making a new physical copy but by spreading the idea and therefore permitting others to use and enjoy it. The result is that rather than a tragedy, an information commons is a “comedy” in which everyone benefits. The notion that information will be depleted by overuse simply ignores basic economics...It is not that free riding won’t occur with information goods; to the contrary, it is ubiquitous. Everyone can use E=mc2, the words of Shakespeare, or the idea of the tragedy of the commons without compensating their creators."

By Robert Link, 4 years 33 weeks ago.

Not the first time I've been late to the party, and if you haven't already seen Howard's 2005 TED Talk, take a look now.

Around minute 9 Howard says,

"The fundamental basis of neo-classic economics would tell you it's irrational to reject a dollar because somebody you don't know in another room is going to get ninety-nine."

By Robert Link, 4 years 39 weeks ago.

P2P Foundation has announced an Open Everything topic area at the P2P Foundation wiki, and CoCo is pleased to spread the word. From the Open Everything home page:

Open Everything is a global conversation about the art, science and spirit of 'open'. It gathers people using openness to create and improve software, education, media, philanthropy, neighbourhoods, workplaces and the society we live in: everything. It's about thinking, doing and being open...Open is changing the game. And, while Wikipedia and open source software offer great examples of what's up, we know that openness, collaboration and participation are spreading well beyond the realm of technology. It's about value, and values. Where open is headed is huge. Open Everything gathers people who are charting this trajectory.

By Robert Link, 4 years 45 weeks ago.

The Best Place to Store My Catch is In My Neighbor's Belly

Still early in the video, Howard introduces a pivotal idea, which I will paraphrase as, "Cooperation is reinforced by surplus." This certainly seems reasonable. When hunter-gatherers were able to bag big game, such as mastodon, there was surplus, and perishable surplus at that. So the question of how best to utilize that surplus became important. And the answer would seem to be "invest it where it will likely be reciprocated".

By Robert Link, 4 years 46 weeks ago.

In conversation elsewhere I've had cause to discuss the writings of game theorist and mathematical psychologist (and peace activist) Anatol Rappoport. This, in turn, set me surfing. I was agog to read on one page that Rappoport was, allegedly, "most famous" for submitting the Tit-for-Tat strategy in Axelrod's Iterated Prisoners Dilemma tournament. However, Rappoport's work significantly pre-dates Axelrod and arguably prefiures it.