Cooperative and mutual ownership forms offer organizing templates insulated from financial market instability

Evidence

In line with the antifinance movements, various alternative organizational forms either newly emerged or regained interest in the recent years to provide ways of organizing economic activities that are relatively free from financial control. More incremental forms include benefit corporations, flexible purpose corporations, and low-profit limited liability companies (L3Cs) that relax the institutional (if not legal) mandate that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value. In contrast, cooperatives that are owned by workers, producers, or consumers, or mutuals owned by the users of products, constitute both more radical and more traditional alternatives. Schneiberg (2011) shows that, although largely outside the mainstream focus, these forms have been establishing an important base of the American economy and provide an alternative template for organizing that is less affected by the instability of financial markets. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my existing interest in alternative ownership structures and degrowth economics; benefit corporations and L3Cs parallel platform-cooperative economics literature. — connects to: Cooperative market norms can be stable equilibria even amid free-rider incentives — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 190; Commodified resistance reinforces the individualization that finance depends on — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 532

Broader Connections

• Cooperative market norms can be stable equilibria even amid free-rider incentives #corroborates (0.70) — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 190
• Commodified resistance reinforces the individualization that finance depends on #complicates (0.70) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 532