Respect contribution
All contributions should be respected.
Principle
All contributions should be respected.
Contribution is the foundation of any economy
Contributions are required to create and operate any organisation. Some of the main contributions that an organisation can require or benefit from include labour, capital, consumption and donations. Organisations will need varying amounts of each of these contributions to operate effectively. One sign of a highly functioning economy is where there are many people making ongoing contributions to one or multiple organisations that generate value and impact for society. To consistently achieve this outcome over the long term, contributionism advocates for organisational structures that are effective at inviting, measuring and rewarding contributions.
Inviting contribution
Identifying - The first step of respecting contribution is that an organisation first needs to identify which contributions would be valuable to the organisation at that point in time. The contributions that are valuable to an organisation in the short term can be different than the ones that will be most impactful in the future. The needs of the consumer, donator or worker could change over time as their preferences change and as the environment that the organisation is operating in changes. An organisation will need to repeatedly identify and select the most important contributions it requires and those that it could benefit from in the near future.
Encouraging - An organisation will need to decide how they want to share information about which contributions the organisation is looking for and what it can offer to attract those contributions. Organisations benefit from attracting skilled talent and capital that can help the organisation with achieving its mission and addressing its current priorities. A clear mission, set of priorities and details about how contributions would be rewarded can help with encouraging people to contribute.
Accepting - Organisations need to decide how new contributions will be accepted by the organisation. For labour based contributions this could mean a job advertisement with a defined hiring process. For capital investments this could mean inviting people to meetings and discussing investment terms. Organisations will need to carefully decide which people they accept that would then be able to make their contributions. Some organisations may prefer to have a more open process that accepts a wide range of contributions, others may prefer more processes and structure to carefully select which contributors will be accepted.
Measuring contribution
Recording - All contributions need to be recorded so that they can be properly verified and evaluated by the organisation. A record of all contributions means that an organisation is able to use this as historical information to reflect on any previous contributions, improve future decision making and inform new prospecting contributors.
Verifying - Recorded contributions need to be checked and verified by an organisation to ensure they are legitimate. The value of a contribution could often influence the amount of governance and incentive rights that someone receives. There is an incentive for people to lie or exaggerate about their contributions if they are able to do so as this would increase their governance and incentive rights. Verification will be an important part of ensuring that contributions are valid and correctly recorded. Some contributions are easier to verify than others such as online digital contributions whereas other contributions may require more checks and balances.
Evaluating - Organisations need to evaluate the performance of workers that provide their labour so that it can reward people who have demonstrated high performance. Evaluating contributions could include research and analysis of external contribution examples from other organisations that are similar to the ones in the organisation and how they were rewarded. Internally the organisation could also compare each person's contributions with others to better understand the impact and value of each of their contributions.
Rewarding contribution
Paying - Workers could receive income, bonuses and contribution dividends for their contributions. Investors could receive loan repayments or revenue share income depending on the type of capital that has been invested into the organisation. Organisations need to fairly pay for any of the contributions that people provide.
Reflecting - Contributions could generate larger amounts of value and impact for an organisation over a number of years after a single period of contribution was made. Due to this factor, organisations will need to reflect on historical contributions and determine if there are contributions that have been particularly impactful for the organisation that should be further rewarded. Rewards for impactful contributions could come in the form of bonus income.
Appreciating - The final part of rewarding contributions is to ensure that contributions are being properly recognised and appreciated in the organisation. This could translate into sharing awareness of the different contributions that have been happening across the organisation at weekly, monthly or annual intervals. It could mean hosting events to celebrate everyone's contributions or specific contributions. Each organisation could approach contribution appreciation in a different way depending on what is suitable for the type of environment that the contributors prefer to operate in.
Principle compliance
Organisations will need to collectively decide how they want to respect contributions. For example, it is desirable to record the contributions of each contributor to improve the accuracy of any evaluations. Recording contributions is not required for contributions to be respected. Some organisations may decide to simply make sure they observe who is making what contributions and then make sure they take this into account when deciding what each contributor should be paid for their efforts. The larger and more complex an organisation is, the more valuable it will be to record contributions properly to make it easier to verify, evaluate and reward contributions more accurately. Organisations that want to have a more competitive environment for rewarding contribution will particularly benefit from accurate records of contribution.
Last updated