An Alternative to Shareholder Value Creation: Subverting the Domination of Capitalist Exchanges through the Production of Uses and Common Pool Resources Management

48 Pages Posted: 16 Jul 2014 Last revised: 21 Nov 2015

Date Written: July 15, 2014

Abstract

This article reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this article explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e., cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value). This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social, and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment. Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property; this article offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of co-ordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world. It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.

Keywords: private corporate, private property, collective action, cooperative, liberalism, brand community, exchange value, use value

JEL Classification: B5, P13, Z13

Suggested Citation

Paranque, Bernard, An Alternative to Shareholder Value Creation: Subverting the Domination of Capitalist Exchanges through the Production of Uses and Common Pool Resources Management (July 15, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2466542 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2466542

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