COVER

COVER research centre, based at the University of Essex, for studying and promoting commons organizing

The Centre for Commons Organizing, Values, Equalities, and Resilience (COVER) is a global research centre, based at the University of Essex, for studying the theoretical and practical possibilities of how common ownership and organizing based on values of cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can foster more egalitarian, inclusive, and participative 21st century economies, communities, and organizations. Its core aim is to draw on interdisciplinary perspectives to effectively and sustainably managing and promoting commons based organizing methods for addressing the challenges of climate change, global inequality, international health crisis, and the political rise of Far-Right authoritarianism. The commons refers to the shared or public ownership of goods, resources, services, and knowledge. It is a general term denoting an arrangement where stakeholders equally own and can mutually benefit from common ownership. The concept of the commons encompasses a wide-range of spheres and examples. Socially, it is reflected in such public goods as playgrounds, sidewalks, and national parks. Ecologically, it is evident in the common ownership of renewable energy and biologically in the shared scientific ownership and use, for instance, of the human genome project. Across the world innovative ideas to expand the commons are beginning to positively challenge and transform social, economic, and political relations. Digital platforms and ‘wisdom of the crowd’ algorithms are allowing citizens to directly impact city budgets and community decision-making; Artificial Intelligence and big data are combining to potentially create sustainable, equitable, and resilient 21st century planned economies; 3D printing and local maker spacers reveal the potential to revolutionize manufacturing for meeting social need not just financial profit; employees and citizens are using digital knowledge sharing to collaboratively solve shared problems based on their diverse experience, wisdom, and expertise. The importance of this centre is to understand how commons technologies and techniques like digital fabrication, open source problem-solving, peer to peer production, distributed manufacturing, AI driven planned economies, digital commons, and platform democracies can promote and create new types of economic and social value as well as shape a liberating 21st global rights agenda that links cooperative economic development with enhanced social integration.

The Management and Marketing Group at Essex Business School has, over many years, built an internationally recognized en...
13/05/2026

The Management and Marketing Group at Essex Business School has, over many years, built an internationally recognized environment for interdisciplinary scholarship that brings critical questions of work, democracy, inequality, sustainability, technology, and collective life into business and management education. Through initiatives such as the Centre for Commons Organizing and the Values, Equalities and Resilience (COVER) Research Centre, colleagues have developed innovative forms of teaching and research that challenge narrow market-driven understandings of organizations and economic life.

This work has sought to expand what business education can be. Rather than treating management as simply the optimization of profit and control, colleagues in the Group have explored commons-based forms of organizing, democratic governance, cooperation, mutual aid, labour rights, ecological sustainability, and socially embedded models of economic coordination. This has involved engagement not only with academic debates, but also with workers’ organizations, community groups, public institutions, and broader civil society.

The current redundancies therefore cannot be understood simply as isolated staffing decisions. They represent a broader attack on attempts to create space within business and management education for genuinely interdisciplinary and publicly engaged forms of scholarship. At stake is not only the future of individual colleagues or research areas, but whether universities will continue to support intellectual projects that question dominant organizational orthodoxies and experiment with alternative ways of understanding economic and social life.

What is being dismantled is a rare scholarly community that has successfully combined internationally recognized research excellence with ambitious teaching and public engagement. The disproportionate targeting of this Group sends a troubling message about the kinds of knowledge, values, and institutional cultures that are considered supportable within the contemporary university.

We are now seeking signatures from colleagues across the university sector and beyond who are willing to stand in solidarity with us in calling for a pause to these redundancies, greater transparency in decision-making, and a commitment to protecting the diversity of scholarship at Essex.

You can read and sign the statement here: https://sites.google.com/view/mmpublicstatement/home

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