The Poor as Suppliers of Intellectual Property: A Social Network Approach to Sustainable Poverty Alleviation

We extend the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) poverty-alleviation approach by recognizing the poor as valuable suppliers—specifically of intellectual property. Although the poor possess huge reserves of intellectual property, they are unable to participate in global knowledge networks owing to their illit...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Shivarajan, Sridevi (Author) ; Srinivasan, Aravind (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2013
In: Business ethics quarterly
Year: 2013, Volume: 23, Issue: 3, Pages: 381-406
Further subjects:B CSR
B Social Networks
B Base of the pyramid
B Poverty
B Capabilities
B Intellectual Property
B Social exclusion
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Summary:We extend the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) poverty-alleviation approach by recognizing the poor as valuable suppliers—specifically of intellectual property. Although the poor possess huge reserves of intellectual property, they are unable to participate in global knowledge networks owing to their illiteracy and poverty. This is a crippling form of social exclusion in today’s growing knowledge economy because it adversely affects their capabilities for advancement at several levels. Providing the poor access to global knowledge networks as rightful participants—as suppliers of intellectual property—leads to poverty alleviation as a result of their increased social inclusion, not only through economic benefits, but also through the poor’s improved well-being as a result of their increased self-esteem and dignity. Using concepts from social network theory, we develop a poverty-alleviation approach to harness and integrate the intellectual property of the poor into global knowledge networks through trust-based partnerships among the poor, non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations.
ISSN:2153-3326
Contains:Enthalten in: Business ethics quarterly
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5840/beq201323326