The Support Economy : Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism - Hardcover

Shoshana Zuboff; James Maxmin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713993200 ISBN 13: 9780713993202

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2003

Synopsis

A blend of business vision, history, social psychology and economics, this text argues that people have changed more than the corporations upon which their well-being depends. In the chasm that separates the new individuals from the old organizations is the opportunity to forge a capitalism suited to contemporary life. The book develops the principles of a third force - an enterprise logic called "distributed capitalism". With new markets and new technologies, this creates conditions for the next phase of economic growth in which the individual end consumer is recognized as the source of all value, all cash flow, and all wealth.

About this title

About the Author:

Shoshana Zuboff is Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University, and the author of the celebrated bestseller, IN THE AGE OF THE SMART MACHINE. James Maxmin has been the CEO of major international businesses including Volvo UK, Thorn EMI PLC and Laura Ashley PLC. He is founder of the investment company Global Brand Development and is currently Advisory Director to Mast Global.

From Publishers Weekly:

This husband-and-wife team Zuboff's a Harvard professor and author of In the Age of the Smart Machine, and Maxmin's the former CEO of Volvo and Laura Ashley give socialist utopians of yesteryear stiff competition with their manifesto for a more personalized capitalism. They strive for the pop socioeconomics of a David Brooks or a Malcolm Gladwell, but their heavy academic style may disenchant some readers before their thesis's more radical parts kick in. Over the last two centuries, they argue, an increasingly efficient economy, coupled with a rise in democratic thinking and growing access to information, has opened up life's possibilities to increasing numbers of people. Because participation in the consumption-based economy is unavoidable, the general public looks to markets to provide "deep support" in their quest for individualization, but "are routinely punished for being complex psychological individuals in a world still fitted out for the old mass order." This macroeconomic structure treats people as either employees or consumers and inevitably hurts their feelings. Zuboff and Maxmin would eliminate the "little murders" of customer service interaction by replacing the current transaction-based model with a form of "distributed capitalism" based on a customer-supplier relationship, so semi-anonymous customer service reps will be replaced by "advocates" fully emotionally involved in their clients' needs. It's not clear how society will make its way to the authors' dream of a fully automated lifestyle, or what life will be like for blue-collar workers and manual laborers. Pundits who celebrated the Internet's potential to thoroughly revolutionize the economy, however, will no doubt rally behind these impractical visions.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0713993200
• ISBN 13: 9780713993202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480