Structure and Governance of Communities for the Digital Society

It has been argued that the value of communities is that they can solve certain types of collective action problems which are resistant to purely market-based or policy-based solutions. Such problems increasingly arise in a data-driven information economy, the (so-called) sharing economy, and in economies of scarcity, where the added-value of information, reciprocity or other pro-social behaviour is indeterminate, and/or the qualitative nature of traded services is subjective and cannot simply be measured by kilowatts, tons, etc. It is therefore predicted that self-organised community systems will be of increasing importance as a mechanism for solving collective action problems in the digital society. Using community energy systems as an exemplar, this paper investigates the inter-weaving of (holonic) structure and (algorithmic) governance which are required to deliver air, sustainable and successful community-based solutions.