The promise and perils of corporate governance-by-design in blockchain-based collectives : the case of dOrg

Abstract

This chapter analyses the emergence of new collectivist organizations in response to the growth of the digital platform economy, with a particular focus on a blockchain-based software developers’ collective, dOrg. This chapter shows what alternative business structures, including cooperatives, collectives and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), can offer to the discourse on creating a more sustainable and stable future of work, while also highlighting how organizations such as dOrg innovate long-standing cooperative governance structures. First, the chapter constructs a case study of this transnational collective, describing how its governance structure innovates upon and departs from Rothschild and Whitt’s two ideal types of organization – the bureaucratic organization and the collectivist-democratic organization. Second, the chapter demonstrates how dOrg addresses agency problems by way of corporate governance-by-design. The last section explains how this concept varies from traditional corporate governance and evaluates the extent to which measures introduced to achieve corporate governance-by-design, such as reputation-weighted voting, address the governance challenges faced by collectivist organizations.