P2P Foundation

We received the following message from the staff at Triarchy Press, concerning the passing away of Mr. Fairtlough, which we are forwarding with some delay, in order to honour his legacy concerning the triarchical organization of human society. We publish the announcement first, then a summary of his main ideas. He was former CEO of Shell Chemicals UK and founder of biotech firm Celltech, but should be better known in the peer to peer community as a tireless advocate of ‘responsible autonomy’, his version of “peer governance”.

We hereby also honour the memory of Lawrence J. Rhoades, a U.S. business leader who was a tireless advocate of distributed digital production, and who also passed away last year. For details about his ideas, see the quote in our entry on Rapid Manufacturing.

Obituary

“We are greatly saddened to announce that Gerard Fairtlough, the founder and Chairman of Triarchy Press, passed away whilst out walking with his wife Lisa on Sunday 16 December.

Gerard was an inspiration to all who knew and worked with him and he brought a singular elegance to his work, whether as an author, businessman or academic.

He established Triarchy Press in 2005 in order to share his ideas on alternatives to hierarchy and the company was launched on publication of his seminal work The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in Organizations.

Triarchy will continue to build on his legacy and in 2008 we will offer an extended range of publications that challenge our assumptions about the way society and organizations work.”

Summary of Triarchy:

“there are three ways of getting things done in organizations and the combination of the three is called triarchy, which means triple rule. The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in Organizations.When I was young I thought hierarchy was the only way to run organizations. Although in those days I’d barely heard of the great sociologist Max Weber, I unknowingly shared his belief that an organization couldn’t exist without a hierarchical chain of authority. Now, after over fifty years working in organizations of many different kinds, I’ve come to realise there are two other, equally important, ways of getting things done and that it’s vital for us to understand these other ways. We also need to understand why hierarchy always seems to trump the others.” (www.triarchypress.co.uk/pages/triarchy.htm)

Next to hierarchy,Fairtlough distinguishes:

“Heterarchy” and “Responsible Autonomy”. Heterarchical systems share power–for example, a board that votes to decide issues, or different branches of government that have checks and balances through separation and overlap of power. Responsible autonomy is purer self-organization–i.e. it has no inherent structure. It distinguishes itself from anarchy by holding decision-makers responsible for the outcomes of their decisions.