Governing Common-Property Assets: Theory and Evidence from Agriculture

Simon Cornée (), Madeg Le Guernic () and Damien Rousselière
Additional contact information
Simon Cornée: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Madeg Le Guernic: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper introduces a refined approach to conceptualising the commons in order to shed new light on cooperative practices. Specifically, it proposes the novel concept of Common-Property Assets (CPAs). CPAs are exclusively human-made resources owned under common-property ownership regimes. Our CPA model combines quantity (the flow of resource units available to members) and quality (the impact produced on the community by the members' appropriation of the resource flow). While these two dimensions are largely pre-existing in the conventional case of natural common-pool resources, they directly depend on members' collective action in CPAs. We apply this theoretical framework to farm machinery sharing agreements-a widespread grassroots cooperative phenomenon in agriculture-using a systematic literature review to generalise the findings from a sample of 54 studies published from 1950 to 2018. Our findings show that in successful CPAs, members endorse and do not deviate from a quantity-quality equilibrium that is collectively agreed upon. Despite the existence of thresholds for both quantity and quality due to (axiological) membership heterogeneity, qualitative changes in respect of the common good are possible in CPAs that promote democratic practices. Our study has potentially strong implications for developing ethics in cooperatives and the sustainable development of communities worldwide.

Keywords: Governance of the commons; Farm machinery sharing cooperative arrangements; Ethical aspects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02922732
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, 166 (4), pp.691-710. ⟨10.1007/s10551-020-04579-1⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02922732/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Governing Common-Property Assets: Theory and Evidence from Agriculture (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02922732

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04579-1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().