Web, value and labour

Sabine Pfeiffer, null

doi:10.13169/workorgalaboglob.7.1.0012

ScienceOpen: research and publishing network

For Publishers

For Researchers

Blog
About

Search
Advanced search

287

views

recommends

Call for Papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Deadline for submissions is 30^th September, 2024. Full details can be read here.

Articles to be no longer than 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and submitted in two forms: an anonymised version in which all references to the authors’ institution and publications are omitted; and a full version including the authors’ titles and institutional affiliations. For complete instructions on style, formatting, etc., please consult: https://www.plutojournals.com/wp-content/uploads/WOLG-Instructions-for-Authors2023.pdf

scite_

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Volume 7, Issue 1

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Web, value and labour

Published

research-article

Author(s): Sabine Pfeiffer

Publication date (Print): Summer 2013

Journal: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

Bookmark

Abstract

This paper challenges the dominant discourse that the Internet is changing the economy dramatically. In a context where digitised value creation is spreading, it critiques the economically- inspired diagnosis of a fundamentally changed Internet economy from a sociological perspective and establishes that the available economic data do not justify this prognosis. It next critically discusses current research into Web-related value creation, starting with a classic and generic definition of the concept. It then suggests a new conceptual approach to the relationship between Web and value, drawing a clear disticntion between value generation and value realisation and differentiating both along the offline/online and commodities/commons dimensions. By means of these steps, the paper concludes that human labour remains the key source both of value origination and of value realisation processes, even in the Web 2.0 Internet economy.

Content

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.13169

Journal ID (publisher-id): workorgalaboglob

Title: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 1745641X

ISSN (Electronic): 17456428

Publication date (Print): Summer 2013

Volume: 7

Issue: 1

Pages: 12-30

Article

Publisher ID: workorgalaboglob.7.1.0012

DOI: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.7.1.0012

SO-VID: 555ef0b2-e05e-40ef-af9f-0e81f602f8fe

License:

All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

References

Abelson, H., K. Ledeen & H. Lewis (2008) Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion . Upper Saddle River: Addison Wesley
Adler, F. (1956) ‘The Value Concept in Sociology’, American Journal of Sociology , 62 (3):272–279.
Amit, R. & C. Zott (2001) ‘Value creation in E-business’, Strategic Management Journal , 22 (6–7):493–520.
Berinsky, A.J., G.A. Huber & G.S. Lenz (2012) ‘Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk’, Political Analysis , 20 (3):351–368.
Bowman, C. & V. Ambrosini (2002) ‘Value Creation Versus Value Capture: Towards a Coherent Definition of Value in Strategy’, British Journal of Management , 11:1–15.
Brown, T. (2008) ‘Design Thinking’, Harvard Business Review , June:84–95.
Brynjolfsson, E. (1993) ‘The Productivity Paradox of Information Technology’, Communications of the Association for Computing Manufacturing , 36 (12):67–77.
Brynjolfsson, E. & A. McAfee (2011) Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy , Sarasota: Digital Frontier.
Caldwell, J.T. (2009) ‘Hive-Sourcing Is the New Out-Sourcing: Studying Old (Industrial) Labor Habits in New (Consumer) Labor Clothes’, Cinema Journal , 49 (1):160–167.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society: Economy, Society and Culture . Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell
Czerwinski, D., M.A. Merz & U. Herbst (2011) ‘Creating Online Brand Value Through Online Discussion Sites’, Journal of Business and Educational Leadership , 3 (1):15–28.
David, D., S. DiGrande, D. Field, A. Lundmark, J. O'Day, J. Pineda & P. Zwillenberg (2012) The Internet Economy in the G-20 . Boston: Boston Consulting Group
Drucker, P.F. (1999) ‘Beyond the Information Revolution’ Atlantic Monthly , 284 (4):47–57.
European Commission, IWF, OECD, United Nations & World Bank (2009) System of National Accounts 2008 . New York.
Florida, R. (2012) The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited . 10th anniversary ed. edition. Philadelphia: Basic.
Fuchs, C. (2011) ‘The Contemporary World Wide Web: Social Medium Or New Space of Accumulation?’ in D. Winseck & D. Yong Jin (eds) The Political Economies of Media. The Transformation of the Global Media Industries . London: Bloomsbury:201–220.
Fuchs, C. (2012a) ‘Class and the Exploitation on the Internet’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:211–224.
Fuchs, C. (2012b) ‘Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value’, Triple C – Cognition, Communication, Co-operation , 10 (2):692–740.
Gensollen, M. & L. Libbrecht (2000) ‘Creation of Value on the Internet’ Réseaux , 7 (2):117–153.
GlobalWebIndex (2011) Report Global Web Index 6 . Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://globalwebindex.net/report-page/.
Gomez-Arias, T. Jose & L. Genin (2009) ‘Beyond Monetization. Creating Value Through Online Social Networks’, International Journal of Electronic Business Management , 7 (2):79–85.
Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2000) Empire . Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2009) Commonwealth . Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Hienerth, C., E.v. Hippel & M.B. Jensen (2012) Efficiency of Consumer (Household Sector) vs. Producer Innovation , Working Paper 4926–1. Boston: MIT Sloan.
Hippel, E.v. (1978) ‘Successful Industrial Products from Customer Ideas’, Journal of Marketing , 42 (1): 39–49.
Huws, U. (2012) ‘Bridges and barriers: globalisation and the mobility of work and workers’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 6 (1):1–7.
Huws, U. (2014) ‘The Underpinning of Class in the Digital Age: Living, Labour and Value, Socialist Register .
Huws, U. & C. Leys (2003) The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World . New York: Monthly Review Press
Ipeirotis, P.G. (2010) ‘Demographics of Mechanical Turk’, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/29585/2/CeDER-10-01.pdf
Jackson, T. (2009) ‘Beyond the Growth Economy’, Journal of Industrial Ecology , 13 (4):487–490.
McKercher, C. & V. Mosco (2010) ‘Getting the message: Communications workers and global value chains’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 4 (2):1–9.
Moon, J. (2004) ‘A Causal Network Analysis of E-Market Business Models’ in W. Currie (ed) Value Creation From E-Business Models . Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann:131–157.
Nike (2011) Nike, Inc. Annual Report, Form 10-K . Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://investors.nikeinc.com/Theme/Nike/files/doc_financials/AnnualReports/2011/docs/Nike_2011_10-K.pdf
Pfeiffer, S. (2004) Arbeitsvermögen . Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften
Pfeiffer, S., S. Sauer & D. Wühr (2012) Designing the Design Process: Exploring Organizational Paradoxes of Scrum and Stage-Gate , 28th EGOS Colloquium. Helsinki, Finland. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://www.sabine-pfeiffer.de/files/downloads/Pfeiffer-etal-2012-EGOS-Fullpaper.pdf.
Pfeiffer, S., P. Schütt & D. Wühr (2010) ‘Standardization of Production and Development Processes – Blessing Or Curse?’ in R.W. Grubbström & H.H. Hinterhuber (eds) 16th International Working Seminar on Production Economics . Innsbruck:411–422.
Piller, F., C. Ihl & A. Vossen (2011) ‘Customer Co-Creation: Open Innovation With Customers’ in V. Wittke & H. Hanekop (eds) New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet. An Interdisciplinary Perspective . Göttingen: Universitätsverlag:31–62.
Porter, M.E. (2001) ‘Strategy and the Internet’, Harvard Business Review , 79 (3):63–78.
Porter, M.E. & V.E. Millar (1985) ‘How information gives you competitive advantage’, Harvard Business Review , Reprint (7/8):2–13.
Proulx, S., L. Heaton, M.J. Kwok Choon & M. Millette. (2011) ‘Paradoxical empowerment of producers in the context of informational capitalism’, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia , 17 (1):9–29.
Rainie, L. & B. Wellman (2012) Networked: The New Social Operating System , Cambridge: MIT Press.
Rezsohazy, R. (2001): Values, Sociology of. In: N.J. Smelser, J.D. Wright & P.B. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences , Oxford: Elsevier:16153–16158.
Sallaz, J.J. (2013) Labor, Economy, and Society . Cambridge: Polity
Scholz, T. (2012) ‘Introduction: Why Does Digital Labor Matter Now?’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:1–10
Schreiber, D. & R. Clement (2010) ‘Informationen als Basis der Wertschöpfung’ in R. Clement & D. Schreiber (eds) Internet-Ökonomie . Dordrecht: Physica:255–260.
Sharma, A., R. Krishnan & D. Grewal (2001) ‘Value Creation in Markets: A Critical Area of Focus for Business-to-Business Markets’, Industrial Marketing Management , 30 (4):391–402.
Slade, G. (2007) Made to Break. Technology and Obsolescence in America . Boston: Harvard University
Spates, J.L. (1983) ‘The Sociology of Values’, Annual Review of Sociology , 9:27–49.
Spence, C., V. Michell & D. Spence (2012) ‘Calculating the Application Criticality and Business Risk From Technology Obsolescence’ in B. Shishkov (ed) Business Modeling and Software Design . Springer:91–112.
Stark, D. (2000) For a Sociology of Worth ., Meetings of the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. Berlin. Accessed on June, 23, 2013 from http://www.coi.columbia.edu/pdf/stark_fsw.pdf.
Sweet, P. (2001) ‘Strategic value configuration logics and the “new” economy: a service economy revolution?’, International Journal of Service Industry Management , 12 (1):70–84.
Terranova, T. (2012) ‘Free Labor’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:33–57.
Wellman, B. (2004) ‘The three ages of internet studies: ten, five and zero years ago’, New Media and Society , 6 (1):123–129.
Womack, J.P. & D.T. Jones (2003) Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation . London & Sydney: Simon & Schuster
Zott, C., R. Amit & L. Massa (2010) The Business Model: Theoretical Roots, Recent Developments, and Future Research . WP-862. Navarra: University. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0862-E.pdf.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Abelson, H., K. Ledeen & H. Lewis (2008) Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion . Upper Saddle River: Addison Wesley

[2] Adler, F. (1956) ‘The Value Concept in Sociology’, American Journal of Sociology , 62 (3):272–279.

[3] Amit, R. & C. Zott (2001) ‘Value creation in E-business’, Strategic Management Journal , 22 (6–7):493–520.

[4] Berinsky, A.J., G.A. Huber & G.S. Lenz (2012) ‘Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk’, Political Analysis , 20 (3):351–368.

[5] Bowman, C. & V. Ambrosini (2002) ‘Value Creation Versus Value Capture: Towards a Coherent Definition of Value in Strategy’, British Journal of Management , 11:1–15.

[6] Brown, T. (2008) ‘Design Thinking’, Harvard Business Review , June:84–95.

[7] Brynjolfsson, E. (1993) ‘The Productivity Paradox of Information Technology’, Communications of the Association for Computing Manufacturing , 36 (12):67–77.

[8] Brynjolfsson, E. & A. McAfee (2011) Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy , Sarasota: Digital Frontier.

[9] Caldwell, J.T. (2009) ‘Hive-Sourcing Is the New Out-Sourcing: Studying Old (Industrial) Labor Habits in New (Consumer) Labor Clothes’, Cinema Journal , 49 (1):160–167.

[10] Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society: Economy, Society and Culture . Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell

[11] Czerwinski, D., M.A. Merz & U. Herbst (2011) ‘Creating Online Brand Value Through Online Discussion Sites’, Journal of Business and Educational Leadership , 3 (1):15–28.

[12] David, D., S. DiGrande, D. Field, A. Lundmark, J. O'Day, J. Pineda & P. Zwillenberg (2012) The Internet Economy in the G-20 . Boston: Boston Consulting Group

[13] Drucker, P.F. (1999) ‘Beyond the Information Revolution’ Atlantic Monthly , 284 (4):47–57.

[14] European Commission, IWF, OECD, United Nations & World Bank (2009) System of National Accounts 2008 . New York.

[15] Florida, R. (2012) The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited . 10th anniversary ed. edition. Philadelphia: Basic.

[16] Fuchs, C. (2011) ‘The Contemporary World Wide Web: Social Medium Or New Space of Accumulation?’ in D. Winseck & D. Yong Jin (eds) The Political Economies of Media. The Transformation of the Global Media Industries . London: Bloomsbury:201–220.

[17] Fuchs, C. (2012a) ‘Class and the Exploitation on the Internet’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:211–224.

[18] Fuchs, C. (2012b) ‘Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value’, Triple C – Cognition, Communication, Co-operation , 10 (2):692–740.

[19] Gensollen, M. & L. Libbrecht (2000) ‘Creation of Value on the Internet’ Réseaux , 7 (2):117–153.

[20] GlobalWebIndex (2011) Report Global Web Index 6 . Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://globalwebindex.net/report-page/.

[21] Gomez-Arias, T. Jose & L. Genin (2009) ‘Beyond Monetization. Creating Value Through Online Social Networks’, International Journal of Electronic Business Management , 7 (2):79–85.

[22] Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2000) Empire . Cambridge: Harvard University Press

[23] Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2009) Commonwealth . Cambridge: Harvard University Press

[24] Hienerth, C., E.v. Hippel & M.B. Jensen (2012) Efficiency of Consumer (Household Sector) vs. Producer Innovation , Working Paper 4926–1. Boston: MIT Sloan.

[25] Hippel, E.v. (1978) ‘Successful Industrial Products from Customer Ideas’, Journal of Marketing , 42 (1): 39–49.

[26] Huws, U. (2012) ‘Bridges and barriers: globalisation and the mobility of work and workers’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 6 (1):1–7.

[27] Huws, U. (2014) ‘The Underpinning of Class in the Digital Age: Living, Labour and Value, Socialist Register .

[28] Huws, U. & C. Leys (2003) The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World . New York: Monthly Review Press

[29] Ipeirotis, P.G. (2010) ‘Demographics of Mechanical Turk’, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/29585/2/CeDER-10-01.pdf

[30] Jackson, T. (2009) ‘Beyond the Growth Economy’, Journal of Industrial Ecology , 13 (4):487–490.

[31] McKercher, C. & V. Mosco (2010) ‘Getting the message: Communications workers and global value chains’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 4 (2):1–9.

[32] Moon, J. (2004) ‘A Causal Network Analysis of E-Market Business Models’ in W. Currie (ed) Value Creation From E-Business Models . Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann:131–157.

[33] Nike (2011) Nike, Inc. Annual Report, Form 10-K . Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://investors.nikeinc.com/Theme/Nike/files/doc_financials/AnnualReports/2011/docs/Nike_2011_10-K.pdf

[34] Pfeiffer, S. (2004) Arbeitsvermögen . Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften

[35] Pfeiffer, S., S. Sauer & D. Wühr (2012) Designing the Design Process: Exploring Organizational Paradoxes of Scrum and Stage-Gate , 28th EGOS Colloquium. Helsinki, Finland. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://www.sabine-pfeiffer.de/files/downloads/Pfeiffer-etal-2012-EGOS-Fullpaper.pdf.

[36] Pfeiffer, S., P. Schütt & D. Wühr (2010) ‘Standardization of Production and Development Processes – Blessing Or Curse?’ in R.W. Grubbström & H.H. Hinterhuber (eds) 16th International Working Seminar on Production Economics . Innsbruck:411–422.

[37] Piller, F., C. Ihl & A. Vossen (2011) ‘Customer Co-Creation: Open Innovation With Customers’ in V. Wittke & H. Hanekop (eds) New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet. An Interdisciplinary Perspective . Göttingen: Universitätsverlag:31–62.

[38] Porter, M.E. (2001) ‘Strategy and the Internet’, Harvard Business Review , 79 (3):63–78.

[39] Porter, M.E. & V.E. Millar (1985) ‘How information gives you competitive advantage’, Harvard Business Review , Reprint (7/8):2–13.

[40] Proulx, S., L. Heaton, M.J. Kwok Choon & M. Millette. (2011) ‘Paradoxical empowerment of producers in the context of informational capitalism’, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia , 17 (1):9–29.

[41] Rainie, L. & B. Wellman (2012) Networked: The New Social Operating System , Cambridge: MIT Press.

[42] Rezsohazy, R. (2001): Values, Sociology of. In: N.J. Smelser, J.D. Wright & P.B. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences , Oxford: Elsevier:16153–16158.

[43] Sallaz, J.J. (2013) Labor, Economy, and Society . Cambridge: Polity

[44] Scholz, T. (2012) ‘Introduction: Why Does Digital Labor Matter Now?’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:1–10

[45] Schreiber, D. & R. Clement (2010) ‘Informationen als Basis der Wertschöpfung’ in R. Clement & D. Schreiber (eds) Internet-Ökonomie . Dordrecht: Physica:255–260.

[46] Sharma, A., R. Krishnan & D. Grewal (2001) ‘Value Creation in Markets: A Critical Area of Focus for Business-to-Business Markets’, Industrial Marketing Management , 30 (4):391–402.

[47] Slade, G. (2007) Made to Break. Technology and Obsolescence in America . Boston: Harvard University

[48] Spates, J.L. (1983) ‘The Sociology of Values’, Annual Review of Sociology , 9:27–49.

[49] Spence, C., V. Michell & D. Spence (2012) ‘Calculating the Application Criticality and Business Risk From Technology Obsolescence’ in B. Shishkov (ed) Business Modeling and Software Design . Springer:91–112.

[50] Stark, D. (2000) For a Sociology of Worth ., Meetings of the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. Berlin. Accessed on June, 23, 2013 from http://www.coi.columbia.edu/pdf/stark_fsw.pdf.

[51] Sweet, P. (2001) ‘Strategic value configuration logics and the “new” economy: a service economy revolution?’, International Journal of Service Industry Management , 12 (1):70–84.

[52] Terranova, T. (2012) ‘Free Labor’ in T. Scholz (ed) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory . New York: Routledge:33–57.

[53] Wellman, B. (2004) ‘The three ages of internet studies: ten, five and zero years ago’, New Media and Society , 6 (1):123–129.

[54] Womack, J.P. & D.T. Jones (2003) Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation . London & Sydney: Simon & Schuster

[55] Zott, C., R. Amit & L. Massa (2010) The Business Model: Theoretical Roots, Recent Developments, and Future Research . WP-862. Navarra: University. Accessed on July, 15, 2012 from http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0862-E.pdf.