Governing the Digital Commons: An Ethical Framework for Cultural Heritage in Decentralized Creative Economies

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Boyke Rudy Purnomo

Boyke Rudy Purnomo is an associate professor at the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Agder, Norway. His research focuses on SMEs, entrepreneur­ship, and creative industries. His publications appear in Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Creative Industries Journal, Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, and other international journals.

ABSTRACT:
This conceptual paper addresses the institutional misalignment between Web3 market logics and communal stewardship imperatives in cultural heritage tokenization. Employing systematic theoretical synthesis, the study integrates commons governance, institutional theory, and cultural rights scholarship to develop the “Ethical Digital Stewardship” framework. Indonesian batik and wayang kulit traditions serve as analytical vignettes to stress-test theoretical coherence. The framework proposes four principles: Community Consent via multi-signature governance, Perpetual Benefit-Sharing through smart contract royalties, Contextual Metadata embedding cultural meaning, and Adaptive Governance enabling cultural evolution. Findings demonstrate how decentralized architectures can be structurally reconfigured to institutionalize communal authority and structural reciprocity. The framework offers heritage institutions and policymakers analytical benchmarks for evaluating legitimacy and navigating ethical governance transitions. This study advances arts management theory by providing a theoretical baseline for aligning cryptographic systems with normative-cultural legitimacy in decentralized creative economies.
KEYWORDS:
Arts management; cultural heritage; NFT; Web3; digital stewardship; ethical governance