Elinor Ostrom Quotes

There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

The market turns out to be just one special case of collective decision-making.

Just as the mind emerges from the actions of individual neurons and their cooperation, the success of an organization emerges not only from its individual participants, but also from the interplay between them.

A problem is that if all of us are collectively responsible for a big world goal, then no single agency or politician is held accountable if the goal is not met. Collective responsibility for world goals works about as well as collective farms in agriculture, and for the same reason.

A conference is a gathering of important people who can singly do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

Majorities without discipline are not majorities.

Very few checklist liberals will focus on transformational work if they are rewarded or punished only for their transactional work.

Democracy is not brute numbers; it is a genuine union of true individuals...the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.

The study of economic organization commonly proceeds as though market and administrative modes of organization were disjunct. Market organi­zation is the province of economists. Inter­nal organization is the concern of organization theory specialist. And never the twain shall meet.

We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.

Adopting and promoting sustainable production practices require concerted effort, something which in practice is too often missing or insufficient. Making this shift at the scale required demands forward-looking leadership in the public and private sectors alike.

If you wish to have power and influence over the many, be faithful (disciplined) when there is just a few. If you have a few employees, a few distributors, a few people, that's the time to stay in touch and be totally absorbed -- when there is just a few.

If 20,000 people start to sing, you tend to go along with it.

I have to work hard and organize myself so that I'm present and not a slacker.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

Never be satisfied with less than your very best effort. If you strive for the top and miss, you'll still 'beat the pack.'

We don't have a particular organization, but we all want to make a world in which justice is given to each one of us.

Let our voices be heard. I hope they will not be shrill voices, but, I hope we shall speak with such conviction that those to whom we speak shall know of the strength of our feeling and the sincerity of our efforts.

Orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. Mere orderliness leads to increasing impoverishment and finally to the lowest possible level of structure, no longer clearly distinguishable from chaos, which is the absence of order. A counterprinciple is needed, to which orderliness is secondary. It must supply what is to be ordered.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Donate time, food, or money to organizations that fight the good fight. We can act individually for the collective good. We can all do something.

People don't talk to each other. You're alone with your television set or internet. But you can't have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don't do it alone.

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.

Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.