The Circulation of Co-Created Value in Collaborative Networks

Abstract

Before the wide-spread institutionalization of the rule of the market in capitalism, social production was the mode of life. Organized in location-based communities, people solved their needs through collaboration and communal and collective exchange, some commercial, some non-commercial, including trading, sharing, and gift-giving. Akin to these communities, many networks have emerged, enabled by Web 2.0 and its participatory platforms, where value co-creation and distribution are fundamentally social and collaborative processes. Nevertheless, little empirical research has examined or confirmed the value co-creation process in such collaborative networks (for an exception see Schau, Muñiz, ..