International Journal of Business and Social Science

ISSN 2219-1933 (Print), 2219-6021 (Online) DOI: 10.30845/ijbss

 

Co-creationist Capitalism: A Corporate Architecture of Competitive Advantage
Hart O. Awa, Ojiabo Ukoha, Darego W. Maclayton, Bartholomew U. Emecheta

Abstract
This paper projects co-creationist capitalism as a radicalized paradigmatic shift that cedes control to consumers through proactive behaviour and communitarian appeals. Reviewing interdisciplinary literature of neo-Marxist, post-Fordism and post-Maussian theories; the paper subsumes political power involving socio-cultural and socio-economic shifts in business interest via mobilizing and sharing of social knowledge. Two interrelated models were proposed to underpin the paper. The first, design with captures building database through online interaction amongst users and between users and developers; and the second, user collaboration shows the interrelated ideals of such interactions and situations that favour use behaviour. To a large extent, co-creation is an instrument of customer empowerment and corporate power of building competitive advantage, especially when market power resides in capital and younger top executives are in charge. Therefore, the paper suggests that with IT on, the seeming demise of capitalism as suggested by some scholars is highly untimely because capitalism has the tendency of re-bouncing into new social formations after the emergence of mobilization of immaterial labour.

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