| Abstract: |
The commons is a concept increasingly used by practitioners and social
activists with the promise of creating new collective wealth (Bollier &
Helfrich, 2014; De Angelis, 2003; Hardt & Negri, 2009; Klein, 2001). In recent
years, a variety of scholarly research explained the different ways of
organizing commons (Van Laerhoven & Ostrom, 2007). To that end, many streams
of inquiry have emerged in various areas: organization theory (Ansari et al.
2013; Fournier, 2013; Tedmanson et al. 2015), institutional economics (Hess,
C. & Ostrom, 2011; Ostrom, 1990, 2005, 2010), political philosophy and legal
studies (Dardot & Laval, 2014; Holder and Flessas, 2008; Hardt & Negri, 2009),
nonprofit studies (Aligica, 2016; Bushouse et al. 2016; Lohmann, 2014, 2016)
and business ethics (Argandoña, 1998; Melé, 2009, 2012; O’Brien, 2009; Sison &
Fontrodona, 2012; Solomon, 2004). However, these different theories are
usually conceived and used separately. Empirical research on commons has
mainly focused on natural resources at local and global levels (Ansari et al.
2013; Cody et al. 2015; Cox & Ross, 2011; Galaz et al. 2012; Ostrom, 1990,
2010; Poteete et al. 2010), and also on digital and scientific resources
(Benkler, 2006; Boyle, 2008; Cook‐Deegan & Dedeurwaerdere, 2006; Coriat, 2015;
Hess & Ostrom, 2011). Despite a long research tradition in local community
organizations, there is little empirical scientific knowledge that uses the
lens of the commons to study shared resources that are neither natural nor
informational in nature. This dissertation aims to fill these gaps by
analyzing social finance services and organizations from an interdisciplinary
perspective. The aim is to understand whether communities can create financial
commons. By analyzing the processes involved, the dissertation sheds light on
the social and institutional components enabling the creation of human-made
commons. We focus on community organizations linked to the solidarity economy
movement in Brazil. Such movement aims to promote socio-economic alternative
organizations, especially for poverty alleviation and inequality
reduction.More specifically, the dissertation identifies the nature of two
kinds of shared financial resources––microcredit services and complementary
currencies––and looks at the functioning of community arrangements that
provide them, the community components mobilized for creating commons
organizations, and the institutional work strategies developed by intermediary
organizations to adjust the scale of these social finance services.The
dissertation is structured in four chapters, each of which addresses different
research questions and uses different methods and units of analysis. The first
chapter is conceptual and based on a literature review on complementary
currencies in order to identify the commons dimensions of seven complementary
currency systems. The second chapter is an in-depth single case study of Banco
Palmas, a Brazilian community bank. This chapter analyzes the transformative
power of governance on private goods when managed by self-governed grassroots
organizations. Chapter three is a comparative case study of five community
banks that focuses on the community components involved in creating commons as
a grassroots response to contested market and state institutions. The final
chapter focuses on the diffusion and institutionalization of social finance in
Brazil and the role played by five intermediary organizations in this
process.Starting from the observation that there is no definition of financial
commons, Chapter 1 – Money and the Commons: Lessons from Complementary
Currencies – proposes to assess the commons dimensions of monetary systems
created and managed by local organizations. Specifically, we investigate the
organizational features of seven complementary currency systems by making use
of two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate: the new commons
in organization studies and the common good in business ethics. The findings
show that these alternative monetary systems and organizations promote the
common interest through the creation of new communities and can therefore be
considered as commons according to the common good framework. Nevertheless,
only systems relying on collective action and self-management fulfill the new
commons framework. This allows us to suggest two new categories of commons:
“social commons”, which fulfills both the new commons and the common good
frameworks, and the “commercial commons”, which that fulfill the common good
but not the new commons framework. Building on this, we define an ethos of the
commons as a principle that consists in organizing commons practices through
both collective organization and ethical concern for human flourishing.Chapter
2 - A Case Study of Microfinance and Community Development Banks (CDBs) in
Brazil: Private or Common Goods? - looks at how governance mechanisms of
self-managed community organizations affect the characteristics of microcredit
services. Based on field research in Brazil, this chapter uses Elinor Ostrom’s
design principles of successful self-governing common-pool resource
organizations to analyze community banks’ microcredit systems. Our results
suggest that private goods could be altered when governed by community
self-managed enterprises. They become hybrid goods because they mix the
characteristics of private and common goods. This change is facilitated by
specific organizational arrangements, such as self-governance, that emerge
from grassroots dynamics and the creation of collective-choice arenas. These
arrangements help strengthen the inclusion properties of nonprofit microcredit
services.In order to identify what components enable commons creation, we
conduct a comparative case study of five Brazilian community banks in Chapter
3 – Building Commons in Community Enterprise: The Case of Self-Managed
Microfinance Organizations. We analyze how community enterprises create
commons whereas market and state institutions reproduce exclusion and
inequalities. Our results suggest that four components are required to
establish a new organization of commons: collective decision-making, community
social control, servant leadership, and desire for social change. Building on
this, we develop a model of commons organization and explain why these
organizations are substitutes for existing marginalizing institutions. This
study contributes to the literature by examining new elements for commons
creation and shedding light on the emergence of new institutional arrangements
for social change. Finally, after looking at commons institutional
arrangements at local level in communities, we examine how commons
organizations diffuse, institutionalize and organize in networks for
consolidating their activities. Chapter 4 - Institutional Change and Diffusion
in Institutional Plurality: The Case of Brazil’s Solidarity Finance Sector –
explains how intermediary organizations help in this process. More precisely,
we analyze the institutional work strategies deployed by five intermediary
organizations in the Brazilian plural institutional context, where autonomous
local state agencies and banks influence community banks' activities. We show
how intermediary organizations support the institutionalization of community
development banks (CDBs) through diffusing these organizations in different
communities, performing external institutional work with governments and
public banks at national and local levels, and accomplishing internal
institutional work through structuring CDBs and CDB networks. |