Cooperative & competitive environments

Contributors would self determine how cooperative or competitive they want their organisation's environment to be.

Characteristic

Contributors would self determine how cooperative or competitive they want their organisation's environment to be.

Supportive of competition

Animals compete for resources and against each other in the natural world. Humans also compete for resources, status and partners. Sports are an example of environments where competition is healthy, rewarded and celebrated. Contributionism accepts the fact that some people prefer a competitive environment where they can compete with others and be rewarded for their accomplishments and success. Rewarding contributions proportionally based on the value and impact they generate is one approach that can help with aligning the incentives with rewarding the top performing talent.

Supportive of cooperation

A number of people prefer more cooperative environments over competitive ones. A cooperative organisation could prioritise more collective and community based values and outcomes. This could translate into having a better work life balance, simpler governance and incentive structures or a larger emphasis on community well being over individual progress and achievement.

Competition & cooperation under contributionism

Both cooperative and competitive organisations can be highly effective and can both be desirable places for people to join and provide their contributions. Contributionism advocates for organisations to collectively self determine how they want to be structured to reward contribution. Governance, incentives and working environments should align with the values and preferences of the people that contribute towards the organisation. Governance and incentive structures need to be collectively agreed and transparently shared. Individuals should be able to align themselves with the organisations that match their preferences and values. Contributionism advocates for freedom of choice so that people can create and join the organisations that they are most aligned with. Contributions should always be respected regardless of the governance and incentive structures that have been adopted.

Balancing individual and collective progress

Contributionism seeks to balance individual rights with collective progress. Contributionism has overlap with capitalism when these economic models are compared in a market based economy. Contributionism similarly values individual freedoms, choice and self responsibility. However, contributionism also outlines principles that ensure these freedoms and ideals are not at the expense of others. In a market economy success and failure is seen as a result of personal effort and decision-making. Contributionism emphasises equal opportunity, collective involvement and fair competition between individuals and organisations. Valuing both competition and cooperation means that each individual should be able to create or join an organisation that matches their preferences. Some organisations could be more individually focussed and competitive, some could be more balanced between competitive and cooperative and others might be more heavily focussed on collective progress.

Organisations should self determine their ownership, governance and incentive structures

Organisations could be owned, governed, incentivised and operated in a number of ways. Contributionism advocates for organisations to make their own decisions about how they structure and organise themselves. Some organisations might be better suited for a more competitive environment such as novel tech products. Other contributors might prefer to have a more cooperative environment. Organisations that prefer more cooperation over competition could adopt approaches such as one person one vote and limit the usage of large bonus incentive structures. Organisations that prefer a more competitive environment could use proportional governance and incentives approaches that are based on the value of each person's contributions. Organisations will ultimately need to align themselves and how they operate with the collective preferences of those that are contributing towards the organisation.