Contributor governed

All organisations are contributor governed.

Principle

All organisations are contributor governed.

Rationale for contribution based governance

Contributor based governance is a highly desirable outcome. Anyone that contributes towards the organisation would receive governance rights and have an influence in organisation decisions. In competitive environments, the people that actively contribute the most towards an organisation would be the ones that receive the most influence in how the organisation is operated and incentivised. Contributor governed organisations have a number of advantages:

• Evidence of involvement - Governance rights are distributed based on people's contribution. Contributions can be recorded and verified. Evidence of making contributions towards an organisation are useful for aligning governance influence with people that have demonstrated more involvement with an organisation. Higher involvement can help to indicate a larger amount of interest or commitment towards the organisation. Organisations could require a threshold amount of contribution for people to receive governance rights. Governance rights could alternatively be awarded proportionally based on the value of each person's contribution. It could also be a custom variation between these two approaches.

• Organisation alignment - The more that someone contributes towards an organisation the more likely it could be that they are aligned with the priorities and intentions of the organisation.

• Inclusive - Contribution based governance would mean that all contributions are respected and treated equally. For instance, organisations that are owned by its workers would always give governance rights to people that contribute their labour.

• Informed decision making - Organisations that are governed by contributors that have been actively contributing towards an organisation should be able to make decisions more quickly and with less effort than people who have not been contributing. Each contributor would likely have a level of understanding about how the organisation operates and what the organisation is trying to achieve. Contributor based governance helps to align the responsibilities of governance with people that should be sufficiently well informed about how to operate the organisation.

Those that are affected by a decision

Regardless of how an organisation is owned and governed there are situations where people outside the organisation should be involved in handling certain decisions. These decisions are those where others will be affected by the organisation. Some common examples could be when an organisation wants to use natural resources to create new goods or when the creation of new infrastructure could negatively impact people's daily lives such as through congestion or pollution. In these situations it is important that the organisation follows any regulations and laws that exist to handle these cases. Sometimes community governance might be needed to approve the requests of an organisation for them to use resources or capital that are publicly owned by the wider community. Governments will be responsible for ensuring that community owned resources and assets are respected and sustainably used and maintained.

Market failures

Market failures could still occur in any market economy regardless of how an organisation is governed. Governments might introduce policies and regulations that try to prevent or resolve these market failures. Organisations will need to comply with any changing rules and regulations such as taxes, access to resources or infrastructure changes or any other policy changes that influence how they need to operate the organisation.

Principle compliance

Anyone that makes a contribution towards the organisation that matches the ownership approach should receive governance rights. No contributor should be unfairly excluded from receiving these rights. A worker owned organisation would mean that anyone that provides their labour would receive governance rights. Contributors could decide to govern and operate the organisation in a number of ways. In competitive environments, governance rights could be distributed proportionally based on the value of each person's contributions. In cooperative environments, governance rights with equal voting power could be distributed based on a threshold amount of contribution. It is up to the contributors to collectively decide how governance rights should be distributed.