Using the Institutional Grammar to Understand Resource Management in a Cooperative of Gig Workers
Virtual
Add to: Outlook, ICal, Google Calendar
Damion Bunders and Tine De Moor of the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in the Netherlands will present at the September Institutional Grammar Research Initiative (IGRI) virtual research seminar.
Abstract:
Worker cooperatives emerged as collective good producers in the gig economy, by providing their membership with more secure working conditions that may especially be in demand during crises. Even under normal conditions, cooperatives with a heterogeneous membership would be vulnerable to opportunistic member behaviour depleting collective resources. This raises the question of how such cooperatives design rules to address opportunism and whether rules evolve in the face of external shocks. We study the case of gig workers’ cooperative Smart Belgium between 2017 and 2022, thereby covering the COVID-19 pandemic as an external shock. Building on the institutional grammar methodology, we analyse 412 rules of Smart. The findings indicate that external shocks with sudden resource scarcity (COVID-19) do not necessarily motivate rule changes while external shocks without an effect on collective resources (new national legislation) can motivate rule changes. The study also provides support for the notion that cooperatives with a heterogeneous membership design rules to mitigate opportunism.
Category
Social Science and Public Policy
Type
Virtual
Region
Virtual
Open to
Faculty
Students, Graduate and Professional
Organizer
MAX-Center for Policy Design and Governance
Accessibility
Contact Davor Mondom to request accommodations
We’re Turning 100!
To mark our centennial in the fall of 2024, the Maxwell School will hold special events and engagement opportunities to celebrate the many ways—across disciplines and borders—our community ever strives to, as the Oath says, “transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
Throughout the year leading up to the centennial, engagement opportunities will be held for our diverse, highly accomplished community that now boasts more than 38,500 alumni across the globe.