Exchange beyond the market

Everything that standard management and business textbooks talk about - production, buying, selling, workplace, motivation, structuring your business - takes place strictly in the context of the market. Businesses are established, people are hired, services and goods are sold and then the money is counted. This is a very simplified sequence of activities, but that is largely what would be covered in most management courses. However, even in the most money-driven settings there are many activities that take place and are not reducible to money. Think of when people work overtime just because of a sense of duty or care, give advice without asking anything in return, or break the rules in order to help a customer. What is common to all these examples is that they might generate value, but they are not motivated by the generation of value (see chapter ten). In fact, caring for others, voluntary work and gift giving happen all around us and are at the centre of everyday life. It should not surprise us then that they happen in for-profit organisations too, as ordinary people ignore money and act, either individually or in groups, in ways that support each other. In this chapter, we will discuss how a lot of everyday economic life is practically anarchist, or rather, that we very often live like anarchists, even if we are encouraged not to.