6: From Governance to Leadership: Ethical Foundations for Value-Infused Leadership of the Commons

Today we see a burgeoning global movement of the commons in response to the degradation of the earth and inappropriate cordoning of resources without a corresponding responsibility for the care or sharing of those assets. As people come together and share resources outside of the usual market or regulatory environment to create a specific instance of the commons, they are committed to self-governance and often find themselves outside of the normal constraints of either traditional organizational policies or the expectations or protections of the law (Bollier, 2014). Furthermore, as organizers create new common activities, they will need to create appropriate statements of values, rules, and policies to navigate the ever-changing landscape. Elinor Ostrom explored this problem in her seminal work, Governing the Commons, as she laid out seven design principles required for effective governance (Ostrom, 1990, p. 90). However, she did not explore the ethical foundations deeply informing the value priorities of the community as reflected in the participants’ ethical assumptions nor a methodology for establishing the community’s norms. Thus, we present an approach to ethics open enough to encourage people to express differences in value priorities without moving into ethical relativism – where people use their own value priorities as the ethical yardstick rather than engage in the work of harmonizing the divergent values and interests necessary for a community to flourish.