Technology as integrated into institutions: Expanding the list of actors affecting institutional conditions of cooperation

Abstract

This study seeks to overcome the gap between institutions and technology in the literature of the commons. It emphasises the importance of inviting and testing different technologies as actors that are of importance for resolving social dilemmas. In this study, a test is carried out to see if a certain accounting technology mediates factors that facilitate the sustainable management of commons. The technology that is tested in this study regards ‘notched sticks’ that were used as accounting in self-governed farming villages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in upper Dalarna, Sweden, when organising ‘new urban commons’. The findings are that the notched sticks did function as mediators, connected in a network that did affect several factors, or conditions, for sustainable management of commons. As such, the technology of sticks was an actor that served in mediating relations, decision-making and transparency. For example, as accounting technology the sticks did change situations with possible individual bounded rationality through the construction of social entities and methods for balancing rights and obligations. Considering how accounting technology can be integrated into institutions, this implies that awareness is needed when changing and implementing technological solutions.