Rethinking the Firm As Commons. Some Preliminary Issues.

The domination of the shareholder primacy conception of the Corporation has been the subject of numerous reflections and critics, more particularly since the 2008 crisis. Beyond a mere restatement of corporate governance’s principles, some of these thoughts, as well as the development of new types of firms, notably in the internet economy, can lead to a profound reconsideration of our vision of the “nature” of the firm and the principles upon which it can be organized and governed. Our purpose will be here to explore some basic issues related to a reconceptualization of the firm, the possibility of new legal and organizational forms of firms (or the revitalization of older forms, alternative to the corporate form), and the conditions of durability and strengthening of such forms. In that perspective, special emphasize will be given to the lessons that can be learned from the study of Commons (notably by Elinor Ostrom) and from an approach of the firm as Commons. 

We will proceed as follows. After coming back to some key characteristics of the shareholder primacy representation of the corporation, and the institutional system which support it, we will consider some preliminary basis for a reexamination of the conceptualization of the Firm (and the Corporation). We will emphasize three issues: (1) the reconsideration of the (Corporate) Governance, beyond the relations between managers and shareholders, taking into account the internal as well as external governance of the firm, and the selection of the major stakeholders (2) the consideration of the firm as a producing organization, and of the relations between production and governance structures (3) the organizational and institutional conditions of the distribution of the wealth created by the firm, and of the relations between capital and labor. Then we shall consider to what extent it could be possible not so much to treat the Corporation as a Commons, but rather to design and implement an alternative institutional model of firm having the characters of a Commons. To this end we will rely on some aspects of the analysis of the governance of Commons, as analyzed by E. Ostrom, and confront this vision of collective action with existing forms of non-corporate firms.

As conclusion we will briefly outline the complex social and institutional conditions for an extensive development of such new forms of firms.