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And Lettuce Is Nonanimal: Toward A Positive Theory Of Voluntary Action, Roger A. Lohmann
And Lettuce Is Nonanimal: Toward A Positive Theory Of Voluntary Action, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Much recent conceptual and theoretical effort to identify and define the kinds of voluntary action that take place outside households, economic markets and governments has a consistent emphasis on negation: It seems to define these matters by what they are not: not for profit, or nonprofit, nongovernmental, unproductive, inefficient, examples of contract failure, market failure, government failure and more. This paper is a beginning effort to shift the emphasis to the positive and the describe and explain what voluntary action is and what it consists of. It proposes the beginnings of an economics of common goods production, and differentiates such …
A Third Sector Imaginary, Roger A. Lohmann
A Third Sector Imaginary, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
A basic theoretical challenge for third sector scholars today is to speak in general and consistent terms about the institutional and normative orders forming outside households, markets and governments in numerous countries, regions and urban centers everywhere. The third sectors of the world have formed in light of a range of distinctive local conditions, including history, culture, law and other factors. A growing international group of scholars has produced a convincing, although limited and partial model of the third sector based in the linked concepts of nonprofit organization, nonprofit sector and non-distribution constraints. We will need to pay greater heed …
Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The commons is a theoretical formalism that is useful in understanding many diverse problems of civil society. A common (or commons) is an economic, political, social, and legal institution that enables joint, shared, mutual or collective natural or social action by agents using a “pool” of shared or jointly held or mutually controlled resources. A substantial body of work exists detailing natural common resource pools acted upon by physical or biological agents. Another large body of work on humanly-directed natural resource pools study the human-natural environment interface, interspecies conflict and population density. Studies of social commons have also looked at …
The Future Of The Third Sector, Roger A. Lohmann
The Future Of The Third Sector, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The U.S. "nonprofit sector" and other forms of contemporary national third sectors which are currently spreading around the world arose in a unique historical moment and for distinct historical reasons and are unlikely to outlast that moment in history. Voluntary action on the other hand has deep roots reaching far back in human history and is likely to be around far into the future.
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The third sector is currently the most popular label for capturing the activities of a highly diverse set of tax-exempt corporations and nonprofit organizations. For some, the third sector is also the nonprofit organization sector, although for many of us it is also the sector of voluntary associations, clubs, self-help groups, and volunteering, although these components of voluntary action have been over-shadowed by interest in nonprofit management. The general thesis of this paper is that although the voluntary action is a more or less permanent feature of human community, the particular forms of the contemporary nonprofit organization and the third …
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The third sector is currently the most popular categorical label as a summary term for capturing the activities of a highly diverse set of tax-exempt corporations and nonprofit organizations. I draw a sharper-than-usual distinction here between a third sector composed of a million or more social entrepreneurial nonprofit firms and and the voluntary associations, clubs, groups and diverse uncountable volunteer and philanthropic efforts, projects, causes, which I label as commons and which have in recent years been increasingly subsumed under the general heading of civil society. While the voluntary action of commons is a more or less permanent feature of …
Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Is tragedy due to over harvesting an inevitable consequence of the voluntary action of cooperation in a commons? No. Actually, commons theory resolved this question several decades ago. Such common goods are those pursued jointly by pluralities less than the dominant majority controlling the state and its unique ability to define public goods. In an era when the state has proven relatively powerless to define unambiguous public goods and public policy making is largely circumscribed in terms of a competition among interest groups, the state itself has become a major producer of common, rather than genuinely public, goods.
The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann
The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The task of identifying nonprofit organizations, voluntary action and philanthropy as the principal constituents of a single "sector" within the larger economy, society and polity has been a central challenge for the multidisciplinary paradigm which seems to be emerging in this field. The concepts of the commons and common goods are presented as concepts with important multi-disciplinary implications. The commons is characterized by uncoerced participation, shared purposes and resources, mutuality and fairness and the derivative concept of common goods, as desirable ends which are universal and indivisible within a commons but not necessarily beyond. Taken together, commons and common goods …