Worker cooperatives in the gig economy can involve large and heterogeneous memberships, which makes them vulnerable to member opportunism depleting collective resources. External shocks may present another challenge for collective resource management. This raises the question of how heterogeneous cooperatives design rules to mitigate opportunistic behavior and whether these rules evolve in the face of external shocks. We study the case of Smart Belgium between 2017 and 2022, thereby covering the COVID-19 pandemic and new cooperative legislation as external shocks. Building on the institutional grammar methodology, we analyze 412 rules of Smart. The findings indicate that external shocks with sudden resource scarcity do not necessarily motivate rule changes (COVID-19) while external shocks without an effect on collective resources can motivate rule changes (national policy change). The study also shows what kind of rules heterogeneous cooperatives may design to mitigate opportunism.

中文翻译：

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使用制度语法理解异质合作社面临外部冲击时的集体资源管理


零工经济中的工人合作社可能涉及大量且异构的成员，这使得它们很容易受到成员机会主义的影响，从而耗尽集体资源。外部冲击可能会给集体资源管理带来另一个挑战。这就提出了一个问题：异构合作社如何设计规则来减轻机会主义行为，以及这些规则是否会在面对外部冲击时演变。我们研究了 2017 年至 2022 年期间“智能比利时”的案例，从而将 COVID-19 大流行和新的合作立法视为外部冲击。基于机构语法方法论，我们分析了 Smart 的 412 条规则。研究结果表明，资源突然短缺的外部冲击不一定会促使规则改变（COVID-19），而对集体资源没有影响的外部冲击则可能会促使规则改变（国家政策改变）。该研究还表明，异构合作社可以设计什么样的规则来减少机会主义。