Organizing the enterprise as a common, open seminar talk by Kristel Maasen (ULB)

On 15 February Kristel Maasen, sociologist at Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) presented a summary of her PhD dissertation in our Open Seminar. Drawing from the theory of the commons and commoning, Maasen shows how worker-organized cooperatives are organized in commons. Workers invest in creating and maintaining a we-relation through task selection, sharing of organisational power, commitment to the project and a focus on direct communication. Distinct from a managerial logic, the principles used by workers correspond to the logic of commons organising in that they produce and reproduce community.