Marjorie Kelly

Although I started it all the way back in the spring, I just wrapped up Marjorie Kelly’s “Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution.” Marjorie is a fellow with the Tellus Institute in Boston, whom I’ve met at events hosted there.

The book draws heavily on a foundation of systems thinking, which I really appreciate.

In summary, the book explores the domain of ownership in it’s many facets, and asks how we might optimize ownership structures for a “generative economy.” To oversimplify, in the 20th century, there were two kinds of ownership - public, and private. The sweet spot is probably somewhere in between, and is being explored in a number of ways - from community land trusts to cooperatives. This book explores some case studies in a few models people are pioneering. What’s common to all of them? An emphasis first on the mission of an organization and their greater community, and only second, if ever, such traditional aims as financial profit.

It’s notable that she uses the term “generative,” especially because there is a parallel field of new economics, also based in systems thinking [permaculture design in particular] that has coined the term “regenerative.” The terms share more or less the same values, but come from different lineages. The most detailed piece of literature yet published on regenerative thinking is called “Regenerative Enterprise.”

Marjorie spends a long time looking into some of the issues with ownership today, and points out that ownership is actually a broad set of rights, a fact which we often overlook or underestimate. Ownership is never simply one thing, and because of this, it’s possible to specially tailor ownership structures for each unique scenario, and this is where a lot of the potential can be found.

I found it to be an inspiring book. I’m very excited about the possibilities within the field of ownership. A lot of people are getting very excited about the nature of money right now [like Occupy Wall Street for example]. But you can’t have a full conversation about the nature of money without looking into the backdrop - property and ownership.… (plus d'informations)

Kelly, Marjorie, The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy
First published just prior to the Enron debacle, the new paperback edition (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, paperback edition 2003) includes new material on Enron.
"Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms -- the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. In THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of stockholders to the exclusion of everyone else's interests is a form of discrimination based on property or wealth. She shows how this bias is held by our institutional structures, much as they once held biases against blacks and women. THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives -- new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance -- that build on both free-market and democratic principles. We think of shareholder primacy as the natural law of the free market, much as our forebears thought of monarchy as the most natural form of government. But in THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more 'natural' than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it. We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution. We must question the legitimacy of a system that gives the wealthy few -- the ten percent of Americans who own ninety percent of all stock -- a disproportionate power over the many. In so doing, we can fulfill the democratic principles of our nation not only in the political sphere, but in the economic sphere as well." -- Publisher's Annotation
"Brilliant. So simple. So direct. And so beautifully written. I think we have found our Thomas Paine for the new millennium." -- David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World,
"Marjorie Kelly is the cofounder and editor of Business Ethics, a national publication on corporate social responsibility. Kelly's writing has appeared in publications such as The Utne Reader, The Progressive Populist, Tikkun, Earth Island Journal, Hope Magazine, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Her work has been anthologized in a half-dozen books, including THE NEW ENTREPRENEURS and THE NEW PARADIGM IN BUSINESS. Kelly is a regular speaker and commentator on business ethics and corporate social responsibility featured in The Wall Street Journal, quoted in the New York Times, and interviewed frequently on NPR and other radio networks." -- Publisher's Annotation
Divine Right of Capital

http://www.divinerightofcapital.com/
Business Ethics Magazine

http://www.business-ethics.com/
"Corporate Accountability"
NPR "Marketplace," Monday, November 18, 2002. An interview including Robert Hinkley and Marjorie Kelly. A RealAudio file. Scroll down to the "Corporate Accountability" heading and play the audio file.
"Here's the question: Does corporate governance really need to be overhauled or are would-be reformers simply overreacting? In the start of a two-day series on corporate accountability, Steve Tripoli takes a look."

http://www.marketplace.org/shows/2002/11/18_mpp.html
An Opening for Change: Understanding the Enron Crisis
Excerpted from THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL: DETHRONING THE CORPORATE ARISTOCRACY, by Marjorie Kelly, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, paperback edition 2003

http://www.divinerightofcapital.com/new_agenda.htm
Corporate Accountability Project

http://www.corporations.org/
Corporate Governance

http://corpgov.net/
Code for Corporate Responsibility

http://www.c4cr.org/… (plus d'informations)