Changing Perspectives of “Value”

Value is now being addressed in a much broader context as the longer-term implications of a customer focus is explored. While the view of value and the entire process of value creation, production, and delivery downstream are important, there are now emerging views concerning the overall activities and relationships of the value creation and delivery process. Many of the perspectives are a resurrection of earlier work: the stakeholder concept can be dated back to work undertaken and published by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the 1960s and that had been influenced by earlier work in Lockheed’s planning department. SRI argued that management needed to take cognizance of the concerns and interests of shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers of materials, suppliers of capital, and society to plan an acceptable business strategy. This has extended into stakeholders’ concerns with the argument that value has a broader context, one that links customers to supplier organizations and the investors involved in “value” creation and delivery. It is important to consider what we mean by “value” and to review recent contributions to its expanding use. “Value” in the context of consumer and organizational transactions implies value to be a positive net result of benefits received by adding value to both customer and supplier, less the costs involved.