Collective ownership
Collective ownership is the ownership of means of production by all members of a group for the benefit of all its members. The breadth or narrowness of the group can range from a whole society to a set of coworkers in a particular enterprise. In the latter sense the term is distinguished from common ownership and the commons, which implies open-access, the holding of assets in common, and the negation of ownership as such.
Collective ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of socialism, where "collective ownership" can refer to society-wide ownership or to cooperative ownership by an organization's members. It more commonly refers to group ownership as contrasted with public ownership.
