gavintaylor comments on Ideal governance (for companies, countries and more)

[gavintaylor]

Empirical research (probably qualitative): Are there systematic reviews of unusual governance structures tried out by companies, and what the results have been? Of smaller-scale experiments at co-ops, group houses and lunch tables?

Check out the Community Rules governance toolkit. It’s intended for communities (which probably leans towards the small side of the governance spectrum) and describes eight governance frameworks with three brief case studies of practioners, ranging from Ancient Athens to the Facebook Oversight Board, that have used each. Four of the governance frameworks have already been described in the post:

• Elected board

• Self-appointed board

• Benevolent dictator (matches founder keeping control)

• Jury (matches sortition?)

And there are four others:

• Circles

• Do-ocracy

• Petition (basically governance only using ballot initiatives)

• Consensus

I don’t know much about the groups that put together the toolkit, but they would probably be worth contacting to find further expertise:

CommunityRule is a project of the Media Enterprise Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, in collaboration with the Metagovernance Project.