Who gets to decide what belongs to everyone?

Every day, millions of people use shared resources created and maintained collectively, such as Wikipedia. This vast library of information is known as a digital commons—a resource created and shared by a community, rather than owned or controlled by a private organization or the state. In August 2026 alone, Wikimedia projects received 26 billion page views, and users made 49 million edits. Over the previous 12 months, there were 540 million edits.

When we think of community projects, we tend to think of them as more ethical than resources controlled by a few powerful individuals or businesses. But does something become more ethical simply because it is collaborative? Who decides how such a resource should be managed? And what happens when the people creating something collectively do not have equal influence over how it is used?

Esade professors David Murillo and Daniel Arenas, in collaboration with Pau Guinart, published their analysis of the existing literature on commons organizing in the Journal of Business Ethics. They examined the ethical arguments surrounding commons organizing and considered whether collective forms of organization are necessarily as inclusive, democratic and beneficial as they may appear, particularly as the commons moves into the digital world.

What ‘the commons’ really is

The concept of the commons began prior to the internet’s existence. Forests, fisheries, grazing land, and irrigation systems were often managed collectively by communities. A commons isn’t an unrestricted resource available for anyone to use how they like. The necessary elements include not only the resource itself, but also a group of users, and rules governing access, use, and responsibility.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom’s research questioned the assumption that shared resources will inevitably be destroyed and depleted due to the selfishness of individuals. Communities can and have developed systems of rules and self-government that allow resources to be managed sustainably.

A real-world example is the alpine meadows and forests of Törbel, Switzerland, where local farmers have cooperatively managed shared grazing lands and forests for centuries.

But Murillo, Arenas, and Guinart were not simply examining whether collective management works. They looked at the ethics: why might commons organizing be valuable beyond the practical goal of preserving a resource? And are those ethical benefits guaranteed simply because people are organizing collectively?

The importance of participation

The existing literature centers on the idea that participation in governance is a key feature of commons organizing. Individuals involved in a commons may help establish its rules, monitor compliance, resolve conflicts, and decide who can use the resource and how.

This kind of participation can have benefits beyond better management. It can strengthen community relationships, encourage responsibility and reciprocity, and give those involved greater autonomy and experience of collective decision-making.

Murillo, Arenas, and Guinart argue that the different elements of participatory governance can be understood as the basic dimensions of commons organizing. But their analysis doesn’t conclude that participation is automatically beneficial. What looks workable on paper is often more complex in real life. Instead, the researchers ask how participation works in practice, who participates, and whether the structures created around a commons really do uphold the ethical values associated with it.

Participation is not automatically virtuous

There is no guarantee that a community will be inclusive simply because it governs itself.

A strong community can exclude outsiders. Shared values can encourage cooperation, but they can also make dissent more difficult. Differences in power can determine whose voice is heard and who participates in decisions. A community can also develop strong internal bonds while placing its own interests above those of others.

In the late 19th century, the company town of Pullman, Illinois, illustrated how a tightly knit community could also become highly restrictive. It was designed as a utopia exclusively for employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company.

But while a shared corporate identity initially fostered order and cooperation, the massive power imbalance allowed company owners to stifle dissent, control daily life, and evict anyone deemed an outsider. Ultimately, the very bonds that united the workforce were forged in response to a system that prioritized corporate self-interest over individual democratic rights.

The researchers therefore are cautious about treating commons organizing as inherently superior to other forms of organization. Their analysis highlights the conflicts between community cohesion and individual autonomy, and between collective interests and equal participation.

It’s helpful to distinguish between the instrumental benefits of commons organizing, such as resource preservation, and its intrinsic value: the possibility that participation itself can contribute to the kind of communities and individuals that societies want to foster. In other words, the fact that an organization is collaborative does not by itself resolve the ethical questions surrounding it.

The digital commons

The digital world warrants a discussion of its own. Creative Commons licensing means that people can share and reuse images, music, research, educational materials, and other creative works. There are tens of billions of Creative Commons-licensed works across millions of websites.

Open-source software is another example. Businesses increasingly depend on software developed collectively by communities of contributors. A 2025 Linux Foundation survey found that 83% of organizations consider open source valuable to their future. Yet only 34% had a clearly defined open-source strategy, and 26% had an Open-Source Program Office.

And what about the free rider—someone who benefits from a resource without contributing equally to its creation or upkeep? A small number of volunteers may do much of the work while a much larger group benefits from it.

Digital resources differ from a forest or fishery. Sharing a file or piece of code doesn’t necessarily reduce what’s available to others. This changes the governance challenge. In a digital world, it’s not about preventing a resource from being depleted, but more about deciding who controls, uses, or benefits from what a community creates.

What happens when sharing becomes invisible?

There are three main concerns: alienation, commodification, and accountability.

People may contribute content and data to digital platforms without understanding that they are contributing resources that can be collected, controlled, or monetized by commercial organizations.

At the same time, digital communities can rely on anonymous participation. Blockchain technologies, for example, can distribute verification among participants without relying on a central authority. This may reduce the need for intermediaries, but it also raises questions about responsibility, trust, and the role of human participation in governance.

A key question is whether digital commons can preserve the ethical qualities associated with traditional commons when participation is anonymous, automated, or disconnected from a specific community. Technology may make collective organization easier to scale, but scale can also reduce the visibility of the relationships, responsibilities, and inequalities within that organization.

Who decides?

As the researchers put it, the “fuzzy boundaries of commons organizing” reflect wider social, political, and value-based struggles over what should be shared and how we should govern it.

The digital economy adds a layer of complexity. As knowledge, software, data, and creative work often depend on collective contributions, access to a shared resource may be only part of the conundrum.

The more fundamental question may be whether collaboration itself should be considered an ethical virtue, or whether we should first ask who participates, who benefits, who contributes, and who gets a say in deciding what happens to the things we create together.