Today's article was written by Carlos Nepomuceno. He is an established project manager, blogger and expert in web technologies out of Brazil. I thought his concepts  and insight into this case study will prove to be increasingly true as social networking takes a stronger foothold in corporate America. I pose this for discussion and I look forward to insights and feedback.

 

 

Collaborative capitalism

Hardly anything could be more against common sense than the recent dismissal of  4,000 Embraer employees.

In what direction are they looking?

Embraer is clearly part of the Brazil of knowledge, cutting-edge technology. Surely its employees have quite often heard the notion that "we need to share knowledge."

But, when push comes to shove, when it hits rock bottom, the shareholder's logic and the former information ecosystem model prevail: hierarchy, power in the hands of a few, manual labor and not intellectual work.

• Shareholders' interests are not the same as employees'.
• Today, shareholders are not those who do the work.

So, the company claims in its discourse to be a collaborative, knowledge enterprise, but in practice, when hit by the first crisis, treats its workers as spare parts, not as an essential driving force.

For one who wants to build a "knowledge company", such a traumatic fact is a very bad starting point.

Even if the company backs down, in response to ongoing negotiations, the collaborative environment will never again be the same!

Are we all in the same boat only when it sinks?

There is a clear contradiction between what is talked about in our current society (all people have to collaborate) and the actual capitalist model.

It's a dichotomy because we live in the network informational ecology, which speeds up innovation and demands creativity, while the corporate model is still based on the exploitation of workers by the hour.

Note that a punch-card system is capable of measuring the time the worker stayed at the job. But, how can you measure if an employee is using his or her maximum creativity?

• In the past environment, supervision was enough.
• Now, a healthy environment must be created to get people involved.
• We are leaving forced capitalism to one based on free adherence.
• From competition between sectors of the same company, to collaboration.
• This is not a socialist discourse, just a realistic one.
• Note the logic:
• Without motivation, there is no creativity
• Without creativity, there is no innovation.
• Without innovation, there is no competitiveness.
• And without competitiveness....

So, if the new employee-participant-shareholder doesn't feel to be in the same boat (in fact and in law), he or she will always hold back, and keep creativity in the pocket.

Either the employee is in tune with the logic of the system and part of it, or all this talk will sound like the pied piper - as shown by the current dismissals.

The talk about knowledge corporation can't even fool a child.

The informational collaborative environment goes down the drain; and with it, the company's future.

Fake knowledge capitalism won't last long because the informational environment changed and with it - as history shows - there will be a revision in the model of power organization at all levels.

Either values are changed or people will look for those who are actually building the new model of inclusive business. Market and competitiveness will show - and already have done - that this path is the most adequate at this moment.

As history has shown, the process of transforming new values into new power structures is not immediate, but is inevitable.

We are entering the age of collaborative capitalism, in which the idea that a boss organizes the company and collaborators can be fired at the first signs of a crisis already is and will increasingly be anachronistic.

Knowledge corporation, is it partnership or a trap?

4 04UTC Maio 04UTC 2009 por cnepomuceno 

Source: http://nepo.com.br/2009/05/04/collaborative-capitalism/

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• Integration of People with Technology & Acquisition of Business Intelligence http://bit.ly/Qotai
• Leveraging CRM Software in the Small Business http://bit.ly/xY40l  

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