Can graduated sanctioning encourage sustainable cooperation in common-pool resources? To encourage long-term cooperation in social dilemmas such as common-pool resources – like oil fields, grasslands or fishing grounds – the importance of sanctioning is often stressed. Elinor Ostrom advocates graduated sanctioning: the severity of a defector’s punishment is dependent on the extent of their history of deviant behaviour.

Fijnanda van Klingeren and Vincent Buskens published a research article on this topic: ‘Graduated sanctioning, endogenous institutions and sustainable cooperation in common-pool resources: An experimental test‘. In this study, the authors compare the effect of graduated and strict mutual sanctioning on cooperation in common-pool resources at the micro and macro level. Results support the effectiveness of graduated sanctioning compared to strict sanctioning in the long term and partial support using endogenously chosen sanctioning mechanisms versus imposed sanctioning mechanisms.

Water is inherently circular. It cannot escape the hydrologic cycle and will re-emerge time and again as water. In the seventeenth century, city dwellers of Holland made use of this natural cycle. They withdrew water that had rained down or flowed into the city and put it to use for their own benefit. How did they ensure availability of water of the right quality, in the right amount and at the right place for the community? How was wastewater either deployed or disposed of?

In the article ‘Waste in Water. Water as Waste. Informal Collective Action in Seventeenth-Century Holland‘, dr. Marianne Groep-Foncke explores, amongst others, which parties within this polycentric governance system took the responsibility for the drainage of surplus water and the availability of water of sufficient quality for consumption or production purposes.

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The paper “Embedding circularity: Theorizing the social economy, its potential, and its challenges” is published online in the Ecological Economics journal. The authors, Thomas Bauwens, Rafael Ziegler, Michael Roy, Simon Teasdale, Ambre Fourrier, and Emmanuel Raufflet, theorize about an alternative, social economy-based embedding of circularity.

The paper begins with a critique of the dominant conception of the circular economy and its shortcomings in relation to allocation, justice, and sustainable scale. Second, the authors theorize how the social economy embeds circularity through: (1) business models reflecting the needs and interests of their stakeholders and, with them, a primacy of social value creation; (2) production and consumption based on active citizen involvement in deliberation and decision-making; (3) an approach to technology that seeks to empower technology users; and (4) the promotion of regional economies and circular value chains based on a sense of place.

Crowdsourcing, or harnessing the power of volunteers online, has become increasingly popular. Especially among public libraries, museums, archives and research institutions. However, attracting volunteers and keeping them engaged is often challenging for project managers.

The article “Behind the Crowdsourcing Platform: Assessing Volunteer Recruitment and Engagement Instruments” analyzes the effectiveness of recruiting and engagement instruments on volunteers’ activity. The article by Montserrat Prats López, Auke Rijpma, Tine De Moor, and Jolien Reijerink is published in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and can be found here.

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Damion Bunders and Tine De Moor from the Erasmus University Rotterdam published their paper “Paradoxical Tensions as a Double-Edged Sword: Analysing the Development of Platform Cooperatives in the European Gig Economy” in the Journal of Management Inquiry. It’s open access and can be found here.

Platform cooperatives promise to provide an alternative organizational model of worker ownership and governance to heavily criticized investor-owned gig platforms, but have until now remained relatively rare. This study examines the development of platform co-ops to gain insight into the reasons and mechanisms behind their slow but steady growth in Europe.

What happens when academic research is being commodified more and more? Thomas Bauwens, Assistant Professor of Collective Action for Sustainability, together with Denise Reike and Martin Calisto Friant, poses this question in a paper on academic marketization. Why is the commodification of science problematic and how can sustainability research help solve this? Read this reflexive paper on the current situation here.