Polycentricity implies spontaneity and organic development over time

November 18, 2022 10:30 AM

"This paper explores the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on cooperative organizations. In particular, we examine how technology addresses and creates challenges within cooperative organizations...."

Executive summary includes

- Backgrounder on coops including the fact that they're certainly not all rural though that is what many people think of when they think of coops
- Affordances of ICT in these environments which includes "utility to both organizations and individuals includ[ing] audibility, visibility, co-presence, mobility, co-temporality and reversibility"
- Discussion of polycentricity (pdf) or the idea of "nested or overlapping contexts or jurisdictions"
- Organizations researched include NY Coordinating Council of Cooperatives (CCC), Hawaiian Homeland Initiative (HHLI) and Hawaii Cooperative Extension, Mental Health Cooperative (MHC), National Cooperative Bank, NYSUT (NY State United Teachers), Open Referral, and the Snake River Seed Cooperative

Some specifics

- "[P]roducers co-ops in agriculture benefit in that they are also able to crowdsource data about crop production success and yield rates, so as to better inform all of their current producer members and as an incentive for other producers to join their cooperative. There is an inherent benefit in developing a knowledge commons within the organization."
- "E-commerce cooperatives in Hawaii (two of them in the agricultural sector) were responding to a new demand for their products internationally that was now possibly through the use of technology."
- "one of the agricultural cooperatives interviewed uncovered a major opportunity in the region through collaborative farming practices including cross pollination across farms. This was possible because of the ability to use ICT tools to maintain databases and share knowledge and information with other members of the cooperative."
- "Geographically distributed cooperatives in our study were particularly benefited by the use of digital technologies."

In summation: "the results of this study challenge a number of assumptions, including that more communication channels in an organization will improve communication or that more sophisticated systems add value in knowledge production and sharing. Rather, we collected evidence that adding technologically mediated communication channels in organizations that had regular and sustained communication actually experienced some decreases in participation in face to face environments and active engagement overall, as well as that simpler and free technologies were most likely to lower literacy barriers to use and thus added much more value than systems with complex or 'smart' features."

posted by jessamyn (3 comments total)

Added to my to-read list. Thanks!
posted by humbug at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Interesting.. The summation you post here seems intuitively true...

Coincidentally... my study group is talking about co-ops this week, from a somewhat different perspective. A couple articles we are reading:
Why some worker co-ops succeed while others fail

The first in a 4-part back and forth argument about the potential or weaknesses of co-ops.

Co-ops or workers revolution (an argument about the limited power of co-ops to change society)

Here's a little documentary about the wild radical edge of the 70s co-op heyday and some articles about the SF Food Conspiracy.

A Model of the Democratic Worker Cooperative Movement.

I'm going to try to at least skim your linked paper before our meeting tomorrow!
posted by latkes at 12:20 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is meaty and my first encounter with the concept of organizational informatics as a discipline. I am delighted. Thank you.
posted by majick at 5:02 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]