In recent years, business ethics and economic scholars have been paying greater attention to the development of commons
organizing. The latter refers to the processes by which communities of people work in common in the pursuit of the common
good. In turn, this promotes commons organizational designs based on collective forms of common goods production, distribution,
management and ownership. In this paper, we build on two main literature streams: (1) the ethical approach based
on the theory of the common good of the firm in virtue ethics and (2) the economic approach based on the theory of institutions
for collective action developed by Ostrom’s research on common-pool resources to avert the tragedy of the commons.
The latter expands to include the novel concepts of new commons, “commoning” and polycentric governance. Drawing on
the analysis of what is new in these forms of organizing, we propose a comprehensive model, highlighting the integration of
two sets of organizing principles—common good and collective action – and five problem-solving processes to explain the
main dimensions of commons organizing. We contribute to business ethics literature by exploring the convergence between
the ethical and economic approaches in the development of a commons organizing view.