Re: FN-FORUM: This collective/cooperative/consortium thing

date posted 11th September 2007 18:58

On 11 Sep 2007, at 6:28 pm, Paul Leader wrote:

> This is the problem with a vertical company, brought together for a
> project
> then disolved.

[...]

>> - Who organises/handles/pays for overheads?
>> - Online/offline advertising/marketing, development/maintenance/
>> hosting
>> of the co-op website, co-op accounts/financial management.
>
> This could mean setting up a company with share holders and directors.
> Would independant freelance people want to do this?

This is why I was interested in understanding whether a collective or
cooperative model might work better than a more traditional approach.
I'm sure many of you have been round the track on this before, and
have probably seen initiatives founder on the rocks of organisational
structures, formal roles and management responsibilities. I don't
think I would want to form a new company, or to have employment
contracts and all that paraphernalia.

I just want a way for people with complementary skills to be able to
identify each other, build a portfolio team that covers the
requirements and club together to bid for work. Is there a way for
professionals to work under the umbrella, as it were, of a collective
body without it having to be a limited company?

On the question of who identifies work and who manages it, could that
be a shared responsibility? I have usually found that the most
effective teams work as collaborators and partners rather than in
formal management relationships.

Regarding how you reward the participants, I have no idea. When I
have worked with other small companies in the past we have tended to
divide the overall contract value according to some sort of estimate
of the proportion of the deliverables that each would be providing.



Ian.
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Ian Piper
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