The Industrial Commons and Other Workplace Regimes

Abstract

Mainstream economics views the workplace from the perspective of property rights, maximum efficiency, and profit maximization. Economic resources, including human beings, are represented as instrumentalities. Social economics affirms the problem of unmet human material need and the inadequacy of the “invisible hand” solution but does not provide a single paradigm as to how the workplace is reconstructed to meet that need. The key to workplace reconstruction is to shift attention from property rights and personal rights to human material need by recognizing that rights derive from need and that rights are means to the end of meeting need. Describes the seven workplace regimes in which human material need is more salient than property rights, personal rights or organizational types such as sole proprietorship or corporation, and the characteristics of the industrial commons, drawing on Ronald Oakerson′s framework for analysing the natural resource commons.

Citation

O′Boyle, E.J. (1994), "The Industrial Commons and Other Workplace Regimes", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 21 No. 8, pp. 14-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068299410145693