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This article is motivated by the CEO of the largest investor in the world wanting in 2018 "A new model for corporate governance" and that "companies must benefit all their stakeholders". Firms that benefit all their stakeholders become what Ostrom described in her 2009 Nobel Prize speech as a "Common Pool Resource". Ostrom identified how "polycentric governance" allowed competing interests, without markets or State, to self-govern life-sustaining resources without denying them for everyone. Key contributions of the article are to identify how: (a) To apply system science to extend and enhance the Ostrom self-governing design insights to corporate entities, (b) Polycentric governance releases and exploits the ability of individuals to possess contrary behaviour to self-regulation, improve risk management, adaption and innovation while enriching democracy denied in societies governed by hierarchies and markets, and (c) A self-funding tax incentive for shareholders to adopt polycentric governance that endows stakeholders with equity to privatise welfare with a universal taxable wellbeing income that funds the tax incentive. This promotes population reduction, less economic inequality and local ownership and control to counter environmental degradations and build sustainable circular bioregional economies for eternity. Polycentric governance is illustrated in sporting and civic organisations with business examples proving its competitiveness and resiliency. The size and costs of governments are reduced to further enrich democracy. Shareholder/stakeholder primacy is maintained for citizens electing politicians who introduce eternal universal benefits for humanity.

With this paper we show how the natural "science of control and communications in the animal and the machine" identified by Wiener in 1948 can be applied to social organizations to establish a science of governance. Evidence is provided that current practices are not consistent with the laws of nature or the practices of living things that must become self-regulating and self-governing to exist in dynamic unknowable complex environments. Case studies of stakeholder mutual firms with hundreds of boards show how an ecological form of polycentric decision-making provides: (a) division of powers; (b) checks and balances; (c) distributed intelligence to reduce information overload, and (d) decomposition of decision-making labour to introduce tensions of challenge; (e) a requisite variety of cross checking communication and control channels from stakeholder engagement to improve their integrity; (f) integration of management and governance to further selfregulation and self-governance with: (g) operating advantages such as resiliency, sustainability and wellbeing for firm, its stakeholders and society. The case studies illustrate how ecological governance could reduce the size, scope, cost and intrusiveness of government and their regulators while improving economic efficiency and enriching democracy with widespread citizen stakeholder engagement. ; peer-reviewed