OPEN ORGANIZATIONS

The structures that organizations typically use for decision-making are closed: individuals are unaccountable, abuses of power are hard to prevent and knowledge is hoarded. The goal of this project is to explain how to set up and maintain transparent, accountable and truly participative communities. The desire for open organizations stems from a widespread dissatisfaction not only with the formal power structures found in governments and corporations, but also with the informal structures found in many voluntary and activist groups. Informal structures are sometimes created intentionally, but more often they appear 'by default'; since they are hidden, and often personal, they are very difficult to challenge, or even to identify and discuss. This is one of the major causes of conflict in activist and volunteer groups. It often takes up a lot of time and energy at the expense of the ideals pursued and projects undertaken, and has a demoralising effect on individual groups and on the movements they are involved in. Open Organizations is one of many initiatives that attempt to propose solutions to this problem. It is focused on elaborating a concrete framework for action.

Documents

Guidelines

• INTRODUCTION (read this first)
• Guidelines for Volunteer Working Groups
• Guidelines for Consensus Decision-Making
• Modules and Roles that organizations can adopt

Related documents

• Functional and Non-Functional Decision-Making Processes - Lowest-Common-Denominator-Working-Practices
• The Systems View of an Open Organization
• For Positive Terms and Ideas
• Placebo Effect
• Essay on Open Organizations, Feb 2004 (hrvatski)

Related Research

• Studying orgs - studying related organizational theories and practices

Older documents

• Open Organizations, A Framework
• Guidelines for Open Organizations
• On Networked Cultural Capital: recognition, accessibility and non scarcity of power

Early drafts of newer documents

• notes on re-reading openorg email list - unfinished re-reading
• EthicsAndSocialTransformation -- the use of ethics in strategies of social transformation
• ConditionsOfPossibility - dealing with conditions necessary for open-orgs
• DependenciesProcess - possible new regular process to care for existing dependecies
• EngineeringApproach - the application of engineering principles to social problems
• ProcessDependencyGraph - an illustration of the dependencies between open-org processes.
• OpenOrgCharter - a proposed charter for the Open Organizations Project
• BoundariesOfOpenness - various meanings of openness and what stands in their ways

Stories, links, presentations, related theory

• Stories about OpenOrg (its history, its use, etc.)
• Examples of groups that explicitly say they use the OpenOrg framework
• Links to related work
• Presentations/workshops of the framework: documents, slides, workshop descriptions ( -> OpenCongressLondon2005)
• Related theory: essays, books, authors, concepts we find useful/related
• Related translations

Participating

Mailing list: openorg-dev

To register, so you can edit this Wiki (but please post ideas on the mailing list before making changes), email the mailing list. Registration was open, but dealing with fake registrations and wiki spam was taking too much time. There are technical solutions to this, but we don't have the time right now to implement them.

When contacting us

• please do not email any of us working on it individually
  • unless you have a very good reason to do so.
• Post to the mailing list directly.

Meetings logged here: MeetingsLog

Project progress / history of work done: ProjectLog

List of priorities to work on (used sporadicaly, not up-to-date): ProjectPriorities
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