Communal-emh

Communal-emh -- where "emh" stands for "every man for himself" -- is the first of Oliver Williamson's modes of organization that comes under the category of "collective ownership". In this system, all of the stations in a factory are owned collectively, but laborers move their raw and intermediate materials from station to station themselves, then sell the finished products on the open market. This another cooperative system (the Federated being the other covered so far). OEW seems to include this as an intermediate step between the craft production (black-smithing, where one man built everything by himself in a simple process) and the next step in communal organization, Peer Groups.

• It is classified by OEW as an "collective ownership mode" (as opposed to entrepreneurial or capitalist)
• Compatible with agoric modes, in my opinion
  
• Although there isn't much contracting involved, OEW puts it under "periodic contracting" to handle situations that might arise from temporary disability of workers (where intermediate products might otherwise stand idle)
  
• In terms of contractual hierarchy, OEW classifies it as being low. There is no central agent, and workers own their intermediate products.
  
• In terms of decision-making hierarchy, again with no boss, it is also at the lowest end of the scale
  

So, life the Federated system, Communal-emh is not very hierarchical. Of the six organizational modes, Communal-emh is the least efficient.

Efficiencies:
a. Product flow
1. Transportation expense - Having everyone under the same roof means that transportation costs are economized.
2. Buffer inventories - Since you may go much faster than other workers, and therefore have to spend downtime waiting, it will be worthwhile to process in batches. This would be a waste compared to a system that moves material through in a constant flow.
3. Interface leakage - The fact that you are carrying your own raw and intermediate products means you have an incentive to economize on leakage.

b. Assignment attributes
4. Station assignments - All people are not going to be equally good at all jobs, so this method does poorly at economizing on station assignments.
5. Leadership - With regard to leadership, Williamson rates Communal-emh as economizing, but no explanation is offered.
6. Contracting - Communal-emh is rated poorly for contracting for reasons given previously.

c. Incentive attributes
7. Work intensity - This mode will economize on work intensity because it is, after all, emh -- every man for himself.
8. Equipment utilization - This mode will economize poorly on equipment utilization. The equipment is owned in common and used by everyone, so care of the equipment becomes a classic Tragedy of the Commons problem.
9. Local shock responsiveness - Should a worker fall ill or fail to come to work, that doesn't stop everyone else, but it does substantively halt that worker's output.
10. Local innovation - OEW rates this mode low for local innovation with no explanation. If you want to change a process (improve a machine, build new dies, invest in new equipment), you have to obtain consensus of everyone. As most people will realize, people have different responses to change, so this would be cumbersome.
11. System responsiveness - This is effectively a macro view of local innovation. If the market changes, and requires a systemic change to adapt to new conditions, the requirement of consensus is multiplied many times. Thus, the Communal-emh system is far more difficult to change on a large scale than other modes.

Bottom line: minimally hierarchical, but the lowest efficiency score.

BTW, yes, some of these seem like rent posts, but my choice was either to detail and summarize all at once, or to detail one at a time and then summarize. I'm getting there, but slowly.

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