Cooperatives are seen as the bedrock of democratic control and an alternative to capitalist enterprises but also as sites of ‘degeneration’ of democratic values and hopes. In this article, the authors conceptualize that cooperatives are a prime example of a paradoxical organization, which...

This article presents a speculative philosophical account of money as a computational machine. It does so by leveraging a computational and machinic framework, drawing primarily from the work of Philip Mirowski and Jean Cartelier. The argument is focused on a specific level of abstraction, i.e.,...

This paper presents a novel axiomatic approach to measuring and comparing hierarchical structures. Hierarchies are fundamental across a range of disciplines – from ecology to organizational science – yet existing measures of hierarchical degree often lack systematic criteria for comparison....

We consider an organization with two projects which have productive spillovers. Three agents are active in this organization: two agents, each specialized in one project, and the CEO, who is a generalist. The organization owner first allocates authority over each project to these three...

Humanity's most pressing need is to learn how to live within our planet's boundaries - something that likely means doing without economic growth. How, then, can we create a non-growth society that is both just and equitable? I attempt to address this question by looking at an aspect of...

Agents participating in different kind of organizations, usually take different positions in some network structure. Two well-known network structures are hierarchies and communication networks. We give an overview of the most common models of communication and hierarchy restrictions in...

Although the determinants of income are complex, the results are surprisingly uniform. To a first approximation, top incomes follow a power-law distribution, and the redistribution of income corresponds to a change in the power-law exponent. Given the messiness of the struggle for resources, why...

We investigate overlapping contests in multi-divisional organizations in which an individual's effort simultaneously determines the outcome of several contests on different hierarchical levels. We show that individuals in smaller units are advantaged in the grand (organization-wide) contest for...