Company Description
Mission |
To establish Real & Open as a force in the fight against social injustice and inequity in education by democratizing information through providing pedagogical principles of assessment, and leveraging broad, flexible, data-driven assessment products aimed at promoting social responsibility and community participation as requisite components for developing validation arguments for low-stakes, classroom-based assessments, and high-stakes, large-scale assessments. |
Principle Members |
Brian Alan Carroll
Elliott Goodman
|
Advisory Board |
Dr. James Purpura
Dr. ZhaoHong Han
Phillip Goodman
|
Legal Structure |
Real & Open is a Benefit Corporation incorporated in the State of New York. |
Humanist-Enterprise Model |
Entering a “post-capitalist” era, new approaches to business and business management are beginning to find footing (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). The humanistic management approach has been identified by researchers as assisting in the pursuit of several innate drives leading to a meaningful professional and personal life (Tyler, 2000; Diener & Seligman, 2004; Cremer & Blader, 2005). Mele (2003, 2016) defines the humanistic management approach as, “a management that emphasizes the human condition and is oriented to the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent.” While this perspective is largely viewed in terms of a model for designing management structures within an organization, these notions can inform and guide perspectives on the essential purposes for generating value and wealth, and the ways in which this value and wealth can be shared internally within and amongst the organization members, and externally, with society at large (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). While the guiding business philosophy for Real & Open is driven by the need to support the achievement of higher-order, self-actualization, and social needs, these aims can only be supported by the generation of capital. Many companies in the edtech market utilize a freemium or enterprise business model; therefore, R & O will offer services and products which cross these two approaches. On the one hand, a freemium model offers services and products on a scale of increasing cost dependent on increasing levels of access to certain features; on the other hand, the enterprise model offers services and products at increasing cost depending on the total number of users accessing the products and features. Initially, R & O will pursue the enterprise model, but as the list of services, products, and product features grows, R & O will begin to incorporate elements of the freemium model. |
Management Structure |
The humanist perspective can be used to shape both the underlying philosophy for the generation and sharing of value and wealth, and as a model for designing governance and management structures of an organization. Mele and Gonzalez-Canton (2014) propose that people have a wide-range of motivations, rather than simple pursuit of self-interest, and maximization of individual utility; they are motivated and driven by: their emotions, their sense of freedom, their personality and character which is shaped by moral traits, their capacity for learning, relationability and sociability of their context, an intentional interaction with the natural environment, their openness to transcendence, their capacity for moral discernment, and a deep tendency to personal growth, human flourishing and happiness (as cited in Mele, 2014, p. 41). The concept that providing governance and structure oriented toward pursuing humanistic, social, and environmental benefit through attending to the person as a whole has recently become a prominent talking-point in North America, in large-part due to the relative success of these notions in practice in European businesses and markets (Defourny & Nyssens, 2008; Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2014; Paranque & Wilmott, 2014; Storey, Basterrtxea, & Salaman, 2014). In early 2019, several US senators introduced and sponsored the “Workplace Democracy Act” in the US congress (Legislative Package, 2019). Much of the language in this legislation directly focuses on the companies who support workers are whole people are more successful along several indicators of employee happiness and success. These philosophical concepts of governance and structure tend to fall into several broad overlapping, and interrelated terminological categories: democratic workplace, worker cooperative, or employee owned business. These philosophies support a broad notion of governance and direction but do very little to support day-to-day communication, knowledge sharing, and decision-making. The Holacratoic method is a practical application which encapsulates the philosophical notions of a democratic workplace, yet ameliorates the detrimental aspects of these notions identified in the academic literature (Robertson, 2007; van de Kamp, 2014, Wuisman & Mannan, 2016). This approach, often utilized in software and web-based companies, provides a practical framework for day-to-day governance. Holacracy is a flexible hierarchical governance structure that maximizes communication and the dispersion of knowledge, providing a humane and democratic workplace, by empowering employees throughout all levels of the company. An additional advantage of this governance model is related to the methods of decision-making, whereby decisions are made in relation to the achievement of the collective goals and aims of the company. R & O will recognize certain integral aspects of the Holacratic governance and structure model, in particular in regard to the distribution of knowledge and the day-today decision making; however, R & O will also draw upon aspects of the democratic workplace, in particular in decisions made regarding the sharing of value and wealth generated by R & O. |