Total productivity: a stakeholder perspective

Every business interacts with its environment in its activity to provide goods and services that satisfy its customers. Ideally, something beneficial for society should also be created by that business to justify its own existence. The underlying theme of the stakeholder concept is corporate social responsibility, which relates to the obligations that an organisation has towards other parties. Major stakeholders include employees, shareholders, customers and society with the latter depending on and expecting much from business. Their influence on corporate values ought to be recognised and assessed. The integration of stakeholder value with business performance measurement and management is explored and related to the concept of total productivity. Thus, total productivity is featured as being an important generator of such a value through the development of the index of Super Total Productivity (STP). It is based on the total productivity paradigm as well as on an organisation's major stakeholder satisfaction metrics, these being customer, employee and societal dimensions; examples are given. The ingredients of good business performance are accentuated in the light of this all-embracing STP by taking into account an inclusive approach. In the quest for operations excellence, it prevails as a most meaningful yardstick to achieve a synergetic bottom line which adds both economic and social values.