Anatomy of value and value-driven processes in business organizations

Anatomy of value and value-driven processes in business organizations

Article Type: Guest editorial From: European Business Review, Volume 22, Issue 5

Contemporary business literature has undergone dramatic paradigm shifts in response to the challenges of marketplace changes such as, globalisation, marketplace turbulence, technology breakthroughs, and increasingly sophisticated and value-conscious customers. In this context, business is in some ways broadening, away from the marketplace to the customer, from transactions to interactions, from product-centered logic to service-centered logic, from planning and executing to an organisational function and a set of processes, from exchanges to long-term relationships. Notably the notion of value is of central importance in this contemporary business. Being market-driven is no longer the only way to achieve market success, the future belongs to business organizations that are value-driven. Value, not money is the basic currency of all human interaction, thus creating the best value for the customer is the main concern of business. Yet despite the theoretical and managerial importance of the value and value creation issue, our understanding is still limited and diverged regarding to the nature of value and how value is created/co-created, delivered/proposed, and communicated/networked.

The purpose of this special issue is to bring together, on an international scale, research on value and value-driven processes in business organizations. This special issue contains the following papers.

The first paper is entitled “A brief retrospective and introspective on value” and is co-authored by Barry J. Babin and Kevin William James (both Louisiana Tech University). This paper examines how value fits within marketing in the twenty-first century. Specifically, the emergence of service dominate logic has brought the concept of co-creation of value to the forefront. This paper comments on previous definitions of research and offers insight to stimulate future theoretical developments and serve as an aid in future research.

The second paper is entitled “How value is created, captured and destroyed” and is co-authored by Cliff Bowman (Cranfield University, UK) and Véronique Ambrosini (Birmingham University, UK). This article addresses value and the value creation process. The authors argue that the firm operating in line with investor interests, acts as both customer and supplier of value and consider the internal activities that reflect these motivations.

The third paper is entitled “Value creation architecture and engineering: a business model encompassing the firm-customer Dyad” and is co-authored by Liem Viet Ngo and Aron O’Cass (both The University of Newcastle, Australia). This paper develops a conceptual framework for a value creation business model.

The fourth paper is entitled “The RBV and value creation: a managerial perspective” and is co-authored by Angelina Zubac (Strategy Link, Australia), Graham Hubbard (University of Adelaide, Australia) and Lester W. Johnson (Melbourne Business School, Australia). This paper explains why the customer value construct is important to resource-based view (RBV) scholars and how one might define it to study it.

The fifth paper is entitled “Value-creation initiatives in buyer-seller relationships” and is co-authored by Trond Hammervoll (Harstad University College, Norway) and Kjell Toften (Nofima, Norway). This paper identifies and explores important value-creation initiatives in buyer-seller relationships.

Finally, the last paper is entitled “Technology value as a dynamic strategic framework” and is authored by H. Alan Raymond (Kooralbyn Institute, Australia). This paper investigates, describes and models the process of technological evolution as a dynamic value framework for strategy and related decision making.

We truly wish that you – the reader of European Business Review (EBR) – will find the six contributions of this special issue of great intellectual interest and stimulation. We also hope that both scholars and practitioners will find them valuable.

Welcome to the thought-provoking and challenging world of EBR!

Aron O’Cass, Göran SvenssonGuest Editors