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Introduction

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This free course, Understanding organisational value, provides you with a short introduction to value creation in the 21st century. It will highlight some key theories and perspectives, and encourage you to examine your own views of value and how you can create new types of organisational value. Organisational value is the ability of an organisation to benefit a wide range of stakeholders, from shareholders to employees, consumers and the wider community.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University module B872 Creating and sustaining value.

Learning outcomes

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

After studying this course, you should be able to:

understand the main theories associated with creating organisational value
explain the different ways to create value within and across business functions, including operations management, financial accounting, and business intelligence
identify new types of value that are ‘human-centred’ and challenge traditional economic value assumptions.

1 Understanding organisational value

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Creating value is an important part of any and all organisations. You will learn the definition of organisational value and its relationship to organisational values, as you study this course. You will start by examining your existing ideas about organisational value in Activity 1.

What is value? How do you define it? How do you create and sustain it? These are philosophical questions that have concerned people since time immemorial. For some, it has meant living a life in line with morally just values. For others, it has been cultivating positive virtues such as courage and tolerance. And yet for others, value simply means anything that brings happiness to others.

More recently, value has been largely linked to the economic pursuit and creation of profit. This embracing of economic value is witnessed in the priority given to fiscal values, and the idolisation of figures such as the entrepreneurs. It has even crept into traditionally non-economic realms where all things must contribute to one’s professional and therefore economic value. An individual should have a work-life balance to avoid burning out, and might consider adopting mindfulness practices to enhance their efficiency and better cope with the pressure of the modern workplace.

Yet this preoccupation with narrow economic value is being challenged and expanded by broader conceptions of business or organisational value. Here value is defined as the ability of an organisation to transform its products or services and increase its use and benefit to a wide range of stakeholders, from employees to customers to society. The table below outlines various aspects of organisational value:

Table 1 Aspects of organisational value

Employee	High wages, good benefits, empowering workplace, professional opportunities, etc.
Financial	Viable and sustainable profit, competitive
Customer	Safe, beneficial, and convenient products
Operational	Quality suppliers, efficient processes
Partner	Fair and mutually beneficial relationships
Managerial	Clear authority and decision-making
Societal	Benefits society beyond economic value

As you complete this activity, be sure to keep track of your answers as well as any other thoughts or questions that come to mind. Then as you continue throughout the course you can refer back to them to see how your ideas of organisational value have changed or even been strengthened!

Activity 1 Critically reflecting on organisational value

Allow around 30 minutes for this activity

Watch this video interview with Mrs. Sani Jackson, Director of Optima Partners Alliance, an organisation that helps investors and companies develop regulatory systems that both create value and ensure compliance. Then answer the questions that follow.

Download this video clip.Video player: author="dh9746" timestamp="20200424T115647+0100" type="surround" >

Video 1 Regulatory change and compliance

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Transcript: Video 1 Regulatory change and compliance

MRS SANI JACKSON:

So my job is a regulatory consultant. So I work within a consulting firm, and my main role is, basically, to implement regulatory change in the financial services industry, but also help firms implement compliance policies and procedures. My background, in terms of how I got into this job, is I studied economics at the University of London Queen Mary's, and then started with Deloitte on the graduate intake scheme in regulatory consulting. So I've kind of been doing this ever since I came out of university.

The types of organisations I interact with are very broad, especially when you start somewhere like Deloitte, which is a large consulting firm. As a junior, you just get thrown on whatever projects you have to do. So I've done retail banking, investment banking, asset management, hedge funds, wealth managers. I didn't do insurance because insurance regulation is very, very different. So that skill set doesn't really translate very well. But across the, what we call, the capital markets, that being investment banks, and the retail markets being your high street banks to asset managers, it's the same regulation that really applies to all of those institutions at a different level. So really, I touch all of those types of organisations.

As I specialise throughout my career, I am now more asset management focused. And asset management, that's basically your hedge funds, your pension fund managers, your wealth managers. It's that type of firm.

I think someone who is studying economics or financial services or an MBA or business studies, and the definition of value is different for each type of organisation. And across my work especially, what we are now seeing is that we really expect the boards to set that definition and the tone. And depending on even whether you're a charity or whether you're a listed company where the value is potentially very closely linked to your share price, or even an asset manager where the value is maybe linked to what's the best outcome for your investors, you have to think about how do you get there.

So it's not just - it's a very complicated definition, basically - the definition of value based on the organisation. And we expect the boards to define that, and then the tone to come from the top, and really, that definition of value then to really cascade down and be implemented across everything that that firm then eventually does in terms of their policies and procedures, in terms of their marketing strategy, in terms of how the HR policies are implemented, in the way that they remunerate their staff, and the way that - we talk a lot about risk appetite as well. So really, we expect firms to set the value and then define the risk appetite that they have in relation to that value. And that then drives all the policies and procedures, and even their reporting and their risk metrics, and things like that. But I can't give you a definition of value because it varies across firms.

So in terms of value across different firms, what we tend to see - this is very much just specific to my industry and my experience. So the retail banks, they do tend to put customers first. So I think what firms need to understand now is maybe traditionally, value used to be seen in the bottom line, and your share price, or your profit and loss, or your retained earnings, or whatever dividends you could pay out. But what firms are now starting to understand is that unless you put customers first, or investors first, or whatever is the consumer, essentially, that is buying your product or your service, your profitability is really, really closely linked to that.

So if you're too profit-driven and you don't care about the outcome to consumers and investors, then you will never get that profit. Because really, the value is in driving the loyalty and the repeat customers and that repeat business, which will then automatically drive profitability. So it's a real shift change in the way that, especially the financial services sector is looking at value, even if you take the definition of value as being how profitable is my company. They now realise that that's not just a CFO sitting there and cutting costs and doing balance sheet and P&Ls. It's really about looking at how do you drive profitability through the products and services that you're offering to the market.

In terms of helping firms change their mindset in the way that they look at value and the way they operate, there tends to be different drivers. And I think, as with everything, if your status quo works, then why are you changing? So if you're an asset manager, and you're making good money, and everything is working - yes, I might have high staff turnover but frankly, I don't really care, because I can still hire the talent. Why would I change?

So the drivers that we tend to see in my industry is either regulatory - so the regulator comes and says: you guys are unethical, you're not doing the right thing, you don't have investors' interests in mind. The credit crunch happened. A lot of pension funds lost lots of money. Local governments lost lots of money. So regulation comes in, and that's the driver.

Another driver is - and we are actually seeing this a lot in the asset management sector at the moment - is investor attitude. So investors care. So, again, even if you as a board and as a company don't care because your bottom line is still fine, you might have investors coming to you and say - and we are actually seeing this a lot - that investors are asking: what are your compliance policies and procedures?

How can you evidence to me that you have my interests at heart? Because I manage a pension fund and guess what? My clients are elderly people, so I have a fiduciary duty to my clients. I am your client, and you're asking me to put 100 million into your fund so I need to know that you will look after this 100 million in an ethical way with the values that I have which are aligned to my pension clients.

So there's a bit of a - from the bottom up, it feeds up the chain. So even if a fairly aggressive hedge fund doesn't care, because their clients care, they suddenly have to change the way that they look at value.

The way that we get firms to think about value is being multifaceted and to not be just a single input such as share price or performance of the fund in terms of basis points is that, when they see costs creep up in other areas - for example, if your operational system and policies and procedures are quite poor, you get trading errors. You get settlement errors. You get disputes with counter parties around transactions. That costs you money.

Equally, if you don't have decent HR policies and procedures or remuneration structures or incentives for staff, staff turnover - there's a cost element to that. You typically pay 20% recruitment fees to recruiters. You have to retrain staff that you're bringing on new. Any change management, any kind of change within an organisation has a cost associated to that. So you can define value through those negative drivers in some respects. Because if I don't incentivise my staff properly, if I don't keep my staff happy, there's a cost element to that.

So the other side of that is the value in keeping staff happy has a direct impact on my profitability. Equally, if my operational processes and procedures and systems and controls are rubbish, there's a cost element to that. So all-of-a-sudden, I see value in implementing and spending some money on having robust systems and controls and compliance procedures in place. So that's, I think - unfortunately, sometimes it takes something to go wrong before firms realise the value of investing in certain areas, because the opportunity cost and the financial cost is not worth it.

The way to see compliance and regulation as a value opportunity is, again, something that is changing. So I agree, 10 years ago it was seen as just a total pain and a bit of a necessity that you had to do, and you had to comply with it but it didn't help your business, and it was purely seen as a cost, and everyone always saw it as a cost.

Now it's changing, and it's different. And I think the regulators have been quite good in writing better regulation that is a bit more commercial. Within financial services especially, we've seen recent regulation that actually can be used to commercially make firms more efficient. So if we take GDPR as an example, on the face of it, it's a really annoying piece of regulation, because you now have to think about privacy and the way that you organise your data, and you're going to have to issue all these privacy notices to clients, and all this stuff.

But also, what it's actually made some firms do is rationalise their data and delete a load of data. So commercially, I do think it makes sense. And it makes firms more efficient. And it makes them question why they do things the way they do things, and is there a better way of doing things?

The way that I try to get folks to think about it in a more value-orientated and opportunistic way, is to really constantly be striving for improvement. And it's for them - it's trying to get them to understand that constantly striving for improvement is a good thing. And I think as humans in general, even on an individual level, people are always doing that, so companies should do that as well.

And that's the way that we tend to articulate it with clients, is that, OK, even if you don't feel like there's a need to change, and you don't see the value proposition or the value opportunity, if you link it back to bottom line, they get it.

In terms of how firms establish their internal values but also prepare themselves for external threats that are outside of their control, is a difficult exercise to do. So I think, irrespective of the external threats, firms definitely should just define internal values like we've already talked about. Because, I think, irrespective of what environment you're in, those values still stand. They are still important.

The values that you have around your product, your services, your consumers, your internal organisation, systems and controls, and staff - they are important. And actually, I think that your internal value foundation, if it's very robust and strong, will prepare you for external threats of any sort. So it makes it even more important. So be that Brexit or a new piece of regulation, or whatever it may be, like a financial crisis, if your internal values are sound, you should be prepared for those types of things.

I guess if we sat in 10 years time, in terms of the definition of value and what wouldn't have changed, I think it will still be profitability and bottom line. Because ultimately, that's what runs economies, and that's what capitalism is based on, and that's what drives tax revenue. So everything, I think, is still bottom line. Even if you look at governments, countries should be run like companies, in my opinion, as well. So that, I think, won't ever change, and maybe in some respects shouldn't change - that you should always look at profitability, and profitability is important.

I think as we've already talked about, the way that you define profitability and what drives profitability will change through those value propositions and the way that you look at businesses differently. In terms of what I tell students, where to be flexible in your mindset and where you want to be in 10 years time is just a different way of working. And I think the workplace is changing, be that flexible working hours, more entrepreneurial working relationships.

I just think the way that countries and cities and financial services now work is all changing a lot. There's a lot of remote working that technology is facilitating, Skype conference calls and meetings and things like that. This whole kind of commuter culture, I really hope, will change in 10 years' time where there's a more flexible working environment, and more efficient as well. Because a lot of time is lost in travelling that isn't necessary.

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Video 1 Regulatory change and compliance

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Now answer the following questions:

How does this interview support and challenge dominant ideas of value?
How would you advise an organisation to define and consider value?

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Now continue to the next page, which discusses the relationship of organisational value to organisational values.

1.1 Organisational value vs. values

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When discussing the question of value, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind are values. What ideals and norms guide individuals, and how do they seek to manifest in practice? This naturally leads to a deeper philosophical debate about what it means to be good and act accordingly. Yet value and values are not identical, particularly when referring to organisational value. Rather, value within an organisational context is judged by how well it serves the health and wellbeing of the organisation and its various stakeholders in the short and long term.

That is to not assume that organisational value is amoral or devoid of any normative foundations. Instead, what an organisation values is commonly associated with what is perceived to enhance its value. An organisation, in this regard, does not believe necessarily in the importance of competition for its own sake. Conversely, it is based on the common assumption that this is what is necessary for it to overcome rivals and remain viable within their specific market. As such, dominant economic and social values strongly influence how an organisation understands and pursues value.

While all organisation are, at least ostensibly, focused on creating and sustaining value, that does not mean their values are necessarily always identical. On the one hand, different organisations will increasingly share an emphasis on serving their customers – whether they are buying their products, benefiting from their charitable activity, or using their public service. In this regard, the ends of value are usually rather similar. But the means for achieving these ends can contrast quite dramatically! Some organisations may believe that paying their employees high wages with good benefits and job security is necessary for improving their performance and the overall value of the organisation. While others focus on how they can reduce costs through lowering employee pay and benefits. Likewise, one organisation may believe that creating environmentally friendly and sustainable production processes are key to their long term success, while another concentrates on maximising efficiency regardless of the environmental costs.

Activity 2 The relationship between organisational value and values

Allow around 30 minutes for this activity

Visit the website for CoTech, a UK-based technology co-operative with 251 members in 35 member organisations, which serve over 300 clients with a total revenue of £10.2 million. Read the manifesto and watch the video, then visit one of the member co-operatives' websites.

Here’s the link for the CoTech website

Now fill in the following table, about a co-operative organisation. Please note your answer for the last box ‘Relationship’ only needs to be 1–3 sentences long. Also note that this is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather you are being asked to briefly describe the relationship between value and values.

Table 2 Relationship between value and values

Name of co-operative organisation	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 1

Value Aspect	Values	Relationship
Customer Table 2 Relationship between value and values 2	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 3	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 4
Financial Table 2 Relationship between value and values 5	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 6	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 7
Employee Table 2 Relationship between value and values 8	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 9	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 10
Operations Table 2 Relationship between value and values 11	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 12	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 13
Partner Table 2 Relationship between value and values 14	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 15	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 16
Managerial Table 2 Relationship between value and values 17	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 18	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 19
Societal Table 2 Relationship between value and values 20	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 21	Table 2 Relationship between value and values 22

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Answer

This activity aimed to highlight the relationship between different aspects of organisational value and organisational values. The feedback for this activity will differ depending on the organisation you chose. While no two tables will be exactly alike (even if they’re about the same co-operative organisation), here is an example to help you with your understanding:

Table 2 Relationship between value and values

Value Aspect	Values	Relationship
Customer
Social enterprises. Community projects. Charities. Public sector.	‘We believe co-operatives provide better products and services to clients.’	Happier employee members means they are more motivated to serve the clients. Shared interests between employee members and clients make for a product produce and service.
Financial
	‘Creative Coop started life as a small group of freelancers who wanted to pool resources, collaborate together on web projects.’	Pooling resources is cost-effective. Knowledge sharing with co-operative allows it to save costs in research and development.
Employee
Freelance commercial artists and designers.	‘We wanted to pool resources, collaborate together on web projects, and, ultimately, work towards a vision of a more sharing society.’	Greater resource sharing leads to more innovative products. Greater collaboration leads to more committed and motivated workforce.
Operations
Websites. Promotional materials.	Customisable. Cost-effective. Scalable.	‘Creative Coop guided the ENAS team and its partners through a really valuable requirements gathering process that prioritised our limited resources to focus on strategic aims and meeting the project’s core funded objectives. In addition, their brand development and application, both online and in print, ensured all our materials looked timeless, consistent and current across all channels.’ Jane Morrow, Visual Art Curator (Project endorsement from website)

1.2 Different value creation perspectives

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

It should be clear by now that organisational value is important. Yet knowing the significance of organisational value is only the first step. Just as crucial are the conceptual and practical problems of how to create value. All organisations want to transform how they do things and what they produce to enhance their value to customers and partners, for instance. How they can do so, though, is not always so obvious.

Over time, a number of different theories of value creation have emerged. Perhaps the most well-known is Michael Porter’s (1986) value chain model. It is called a chain as it is focused on the creation of processes that can turn specific organisational inputs into more valuable organisational outputs. In his view, these chains are influenced by ‘primary activities’ such as marketing and operations management, as well as ‘secondary activities’ including HR policies and technological development. Drawing on this model, scholars and policy makers have identified global value chains that cross national borders and can involve a wide range of organisations.

However, this is not the only theory of value creation. As discussed in the previous section, organisational values can strongly impact the pursuit of organisational value and vice versa. Similarly, these deeper values can guide how organisations perceive and undertake value creation. There are a growing number of perspectives for informing these efforts. Provided below is a table outlining some of the most important contemporary theories of value creation:

Table 3 Contemporary theories of value creation

Value Creation Theory	Description
Value Chains	Value creation comes from ensuring that you create processes so that everything you input into your organisation becomes a more valuable output.
Value Based Management	Value creation comes from having a clear organisational mission and set of values that guides all organisational members, processes, and functions.
Systems Thinking	Value creation comes from understanding how an organisation is a part of broader inter-dependant systems that it must work within and effectively respond to.
Real Options Theory	Value creation comes from understanding the various short- and long-term options an organisation can pursue and then forming flexible strategies to maximise these possibilities.
Bureaucratic Theory	Value creation comes from having clear top-down institutional structures where everyone knows their roles and responsibilities.

Activity 3 Meet the OU value creators

Allow around 30 minutes for this activity

Read each of the profiles below. Each individual has a different view of how the OU should seek to create and capture value. Following each profile, make some notes in the box about which model of value creation they represent and why. Here are the theories again:

Value Chains
Value Based Management
Systems Thinking
Real Options Theory
Bureaucratic Theory

OU Value Creator 1: Jack

‘Hi everyone, my name is Jack and I appreciate the opportunity to help the OU create value. Now I might sound a bit old fashioned but I think what every organisation needs is some clear structures where everyone clearly knows their various roles and responsibilities. Providing the OU with a top down structure will allow leaders to make strong strategic decisions and permit those under them to carry them out efficiently and productively. There should be clear rules laying out who does what and why. We should redesign our processes so that each department specialises in what they do best, managers are given the authority they need to get the job done, the entire organisation has firm rules and regulations for guiding each member’s actions, everyone has the necessary technical competence for achieving organisational objectives, and finally we are run according to institutional norms not the whims of individual personalities. In a time when there is so much change happening in the sector, we must ensure the OU is as stable as possible. Authority, rules, and hierarchy – that is the ideal way to create value.’

What type of value creator is Jack?

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Answer

Jack represents a bureaucratic theory of value creation. He emphasises the need for a hierarchical organisation, with binding and impersonal rules and regulation as well as authority. Value is created through institutional stability, specialisation, and clear knowledge of roles and responsibilities.

OU Value Creator 2: Jeanine

‘Hi everyone, my name is Jeanine, thank you for inviting me to help the Open University increase its value. It is absolutely critical that the University remains flexible enough to maximise its options over time. We must think in terms of the size of our overall project to grow, its timings, and how it will operate once we have begun. For instance, do we want to expand? If so then we need to ensure that we have extra capacity in case an opportunity to do so presents itself. By contrast, would we like to contract in size? Then we must be ready to reduce key parts of our operations and staff. Would we like to keep our options open? If so then we must put in place a flexible operating system that will allow us to grow bigger or smaller based on the conditions we will face in the short and long term. In order for us to succeed, we must give managers the power to continually make decisions linked to present circumstances. The future cannot be fully predicted but the capacity of organisational leaders to respond to them strategically should remain constant. The first step is to assess the full range of possible values for the Open University and then forecast its range of possible future values.’

What type of value creator is Jeanine?

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Answer

Jeanine represents a real possible options perspective. She is assessing what the various options for the OU are and providing managers with the flexibility necessary to implement different options depending on current and future conditions.

OU Value Creator 3: Jamal

‘Hi everyone, my name is Jamal and I believe that for an organisation to succeed they need to have a strong, clear, and consistent corporate mission. Everything in the organisation from its governance to its strategy to its communication to its process must reflect its core values and purposes. If the OU wants to grow confidently into the future it must clearly define what its core values and purpose are so that it can transform all parts of its organisation accordingly. Only in doing so can the OU create, manage, and measure its value. I believe that the OU must, therefore, first understand what makes distance learning and open education so attractive in the first place. Then it must consider what its competitive advantage is within this marketplace. Once it has done so it can then set about (1) identifying organisational objectives (2) developing strategies and organisational designs (3) identify ‘value drivers’ (4) develop actions plans, select measures, and set clear targets and (5) evaluate the performance of each department and organisational members against these value frameworks.’

What type of value creator is Jamal?

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Answer

Jamal represents a value based management perspective. He believes that identifying the core organisational mission will allow it to base all of its decisions on clear and achievable value creation plans and measures. Value based management judges each organisational process and member on how they are contributing to value.

OU Value Creator 4: Jordan

‘Hi everyone, my name is Jordan and I am so excited to be here to tell you how I believe the OU can add to its value! An organisation is more than its component parts. It is an interdependent system where all things impact one another. We therefore must understand how various factors impacting the OU are working together to shape its overall present and future value. In such a complex order, where do we even begin? The best place is to understand the overall function of the OU. We can then turn our attention to its governing structure – how is it organised and why? Next comes a deeper understanding of its processes, in particular how it operates over time and where it does so. Finally, we must assess its steering principles – what are its objectives and how can it internally respond to challenges in the external marketplace that may challenge these goals? Through taking such an integrated and systematic view I am sure that the OU will be a success both today and in the future.’

What type of value creator is Jordon?

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Answer

Jordan represents systems thinking perspective to value creation. She highlights how any organisation works within a broader interdependent system. For this reason, it is important to understand the function, structures, processes, and steering principles that guide its decision-making and allow it to respond to systemic opportunities and challenges.

OU Value Creator 5: Daniel

‘Hi everyone, my name is Daniel and I believe I know how I can ensure the OU retains and expands its value. The organisation must ensure that it orients all its activities to create value for its customers. This means linking all of your processes and actions together so that the value created and captured is more than the cost of creating this value. We have to start with our primary activities: how we obtain, transform, deliver, sell, and maintain our products. We can then concentrate on our support activities, ranging from the buying of resources, to our HR policies, to the ways we research technological innovation for improving our primary activities. Then discover, within your primary and supporting activities, which actions directly create value and which ones indirectly do. Contacting students in order to recruit them onto our programmes directly increases our sales, while effectively managing the team who contacts these students is an important indirect activity. Ensuring that all of our direct and indirect activities connect up together to enhance our overall value is the key to our success.’

What type of value creator is Daniel?

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Answer

Daniel represents the value chain perspective to value creation. It is about constructing a linear chain from your inbound logistics to your operations to your outbound logistics to your marketing and finally delivery of services so that you are constantly creating and maximising your value as an organisation. This means aligning your primary and support activities as well as the direct and indirect value creation activities within these categories.

2 Organisational value and business functions

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This section focuses on developing a better understanding of the impact that different business functions have on the creation of organisational value. It provides an overview of these functions with special attention paid to operation management and financial accounting.

Figure 1

Long description

2.1 The value of business functions

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In philosophical and ethical terms, value may be a fairly complicated and debate-worthy topic, but within organisations it is, in essence, relatively simple. It is the attempt to transform processes and products to improve their worth and benefit to organisational stakeholders. However, within this comparatively straightforward definition, there is much variation in practice. Concretely achieving this shared goal requires an understanding of the various parts of the organisation, as well as being open to the possibilities of alternative ways of achieving organisational value.

Figure 2

Long description

This course looks at three functions in depth for this purpose – operations management, financial accounting, and business intelligence. The reason is that these three functions play a vital part in creating, sustaining, and expanding value, especially in a modern context, as they are constantly being innovated to meet new business and societal challenges. Operations management focuses on the design, implementation, and improvement of those processes and systems that create an organisation’s ultimate goods and services. The financial accounting function concentrates on the collection and allocation of financial resources to serve the needs of the organisation and ensure its fiscal viability. Business intelligence concentrates on how to collect and use information in a way that optimises an organisation’s value.

Crucially, while almost every organisation relies on these functions, how they do so can differ significantly. Value creation depends on understanding the key strengths and goals of the organisation, and then how its diverse functions can contribute to these value ends. In this respect, organisations must identify their core competencies – those things that they do best – and develop these across their organisation in ways that best reflect their value creation objectives.

2.2 The functional value of information

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We are currently living in the ‘information age’. Advances in digital and mobile technologies have allowed people to have access to almost any information they want at literally the touch of a button. However, has all this information actually made us any smarter? Is it allowing organisations and governments to make better decisions? Is it creating and expanding value?

Figure 3

Long description

These questions do not have easy answers. However, it is important to distinguish data from information. Data is simply bits of information – facts and figures about people and things. Information is the purposeful analysing and contextualising of this data. Put differently, data is the raw material and information is the finished product. In this context, value creation can be seen as the transformation of raw data into valuable information.

The creation of informational value can be applied to different aspects and functions of organisational value. Data can be gathered and analysed about customers, employees, partners, and managers. Likewise, each business function will provide organisations with its own data and information. The table below briefly highlights some of the data and information offered by different business functions.

Table 4 Informational value of business functions

Business Function	Data	Information
Human Resources	Employee and recruitment retention. Employee wellbeing. Employee wages. Employee anxiety. Employee productivity and efficiency. Employee benefits.	How well an organisation recruits and retains its talented workforce. How engaged and committed its workforce is to their job and organisational mission. How benefits can be used to improve employee wellbeing and their overall productivity.
Marketing	Sales of different products and services. Public desire for specific goods and services. Customer reactions to different marketing campaigns. Effectiveness of branding. Relationship between organisational goals and public perception.	How well an organisation is selling its goods and services in relation to other providers. How much demand there is for a prospective good or service. How attractive an organisation is making their goods and services to the public.
Operation Management	The processes of how a good or service is produced. The cost and effectiveness of suppliers. The quality of goods and services being produced. The quantity of goods and services being produces. The stock of materials (including human resources) for the production of goods and services.	Which process (e.g. flexible specialisation, lean production, mass customisation, agile manufacturing, etc.) is best for maximising your value. How you can enhance the quality of your goods and services. Ensuring that you have the materials and capacity to produce the goods and services you need.
Financial Accounting	Monetary inflow and outflows. Allocation of monetary resources to different organisational functions. Organisational costs relative to similar organisations. Projected costs.	How an organisation can better allocate its financial resources and increase its overall revenue. The projected financial resources an organisation will have for its future plans.

It is critical for any organisation to properly analyse and contextualise its data, so that it can valuably exploit it. In this contemporary period, many organisations (and individuals!) suffer from what can be termed ‘informational overload’ – where they are overwhelmed by the amount of data and information they have. Putting in proper processes for analysing data, and understanding what information you want from it, is therefore essential in avoiding this problem. New technologies linking digital communication, artificial intelligence, and big data can help organisations use data and information to make better and more valuable decisions – often referred to as ‘business intelligence’.

Activity 4 The functional value of information

Allow around 30 minutes for this activity

Watch the video interview of Professor Devandra Kodwani (Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at the Open University) as he talks about the potential of expanding organisational value in the 21st century. As you watch, make some notes about these questions.

How does Professor Kodwani create value across business functions?
How does he integrate varied information for this purpose?

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Video 2 Expanding organisational value

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DEVENDRA KODWANI

My ideas of values have evolved over time. I am currently executive dean for the Faculty of Business and Law at The Open University. Also, I am a professor of finance, corporate finance, and governance. So my notion of value goes back to my days as a student when I was undergraduate student, degree in commerce, where you come to understand about the commerce and business, but also, subsequently, when I was doing MBA, that I started thinking about, what is it that we add to from management point of view to any process that adds value to what customers use, service or good?

But there's other intangible side of it that you are creating knowledge. Now, that creates a public good. And that makes me even more passionate about my role, because then you are generating something that will outlast the generations and be of value to other people. And they can pick up that knowledge, use that, critique it, but broadly make society more livable, a society that understands its own place - human kind to understand its own place in nature.

So I think there are very broad, intangible value propositions that academic institutions have. So I think that notion of value is still not very well understood. You can see the debate going on. But so for me, the value as a proposition, as a notion has gone from economic notion of value as a utility to wages, to profits, to returns, to public good.

I think, how you practise value-creating activities, such as any profession - whether you are in information technology or a manufacturing or banker or a bureaucrat in a government - at every place, there is opportunity to create value. So as I have worked most of my life in academic, but also I have been leaders in leadership roles. Back in India, when I worked before coming to OU, I was in charge of a group of institutions and I had five colleges and their principals reporting to me. I was in charge of a small management institute.

And there, I think some of the lessons that I learned in terms of value are worth reflecting on as a practitioner, as well as an academic. One stark, one that stands out from my memory is, we had earthquake in year 2000 in the place where I was working. It was very tragic development, and it happened in front of my eyes actually. I somehow survived, just was 10 feet away from the building that went down.

Now, it was a massive tragedy. And once we were through with what we could do in the aftermath of the event - and literally, we went out and saved people from buildings. I lost number of my students, my staff, and the members of the families of the staff. So for seven days was - we were just running on adrenaline and trying to rescue people. And actually, until third day after the earthquake, we will still rescuing from debris people and animals.

In terms of organisational value, what I see is that, if you are one of those persons who has that sometimes very good experience, sometimes very harsh experience, but how do you internalise that and lead your people based on that internalisation, that you are creating value within? So sometimes the value is not created that actually in terms of students - for example, if I take this example of my role that I am enabler of value creation rather than creator of the value. So that is another thing one has to bear in mind.

So information can add to value creation by helping us analyse and diagnose the situation better, to unlock the value which might be locked somewhere or to create opportunities for creating value somewhere. So in that, information plays a vital role. So you have - I think there can be some information where you zoom into the information to create value, so you are interested in microseconds analytics type of data, how people are interacting with website, and so on. Or you sometimes have to zoom out to see megatrends, and then adapt to create value for the business.

I think smallest thing is equally valuable in terms of final experience. So interdependence between the functions makes it imperative that we don't have a functional view of value. Actually, if you tried to maximise the functional value maximisation, you might be undermining the overall product quality or service quality for the customer.

But I think where the sustainable value is more important, and perhaps a wiser response, is to look at the interdependence of human existence and human needs on rest of the nature. So we have these two dilemmas as leaders and business people or others who are in charge of managing resources: short term versus long-term dilemma and local versus global.

Let me unpack both of these ideas. So firms who are subject to capital market kind of discipline are obliged these days to report quarterly, monthly earnings forecast, and so on, so that creates a sense of pressure for them, that every quarter you are trying to hit the expectations of the analysts and so on.

And I do not know to what extent actually it therefore delivers long-term value because, if you are managing quarterly forecasts, then sometimes the decisions that you take for foreign goods and services give you results only in long term. So that pressure on short-term focus creates tension for the boards, for the senior management to manage short-term performance year-on-year which might be against the long-term interests of the shareholders themselves sometimes.

The other is local versus a global dilemma, where we pay attention to here and now effect of our business and not enough attention to what's the long-term impact on the environment or other things. So there are many examples: when plastics were invented, the petrochemical industry thrived on that product and plastics have invaded the whole planet. Now, we are finding after 30, 40 years how much damage it has done to oceans and everything.

So this point about sustainable value creation is to understand the interdependence between our consumption and production patterns in short term and long term and between here and now and global perspective.

Value challenges for 21st century - I think one of the challenge is that a narrow notion of value will have to give way to a broader notion of value, within which sustainability will be embedded. I think as education spreads to more parts of world, awareness about the climate change increases, more and more customers will be looking for products and services which are beyond the transactional kind of gratification kind of category, but sustainable sources of value. So it will affect, and it will become rational just for people. It won't be any more emotional response to changing climate or care for environment. It'll become rational demand.

So that challenge will come. And therefore, shortcuts to meeting those goods and services demand will be a question and it will create a pressure for those firms who don't respond. The other challenge would be the notion of value itself will come under pressure.

So some of those changes that these technologies will bring as possibilities in terms of delivering value through supply chain would create tensions and transition how humans adapt to them as a consumer of goods and services, and it will take a while for businesses to understand what it means, and therefore adapt their strategy. So that will be another challenge.

And the third challenge which I feel about value is, which is - I don't have a strong view or any clear view on this - but I think it is going to be an issue. Going forward, financial capital is going to be less important than human capital, if I may use the word human capital. Why do I say so? Because a lot of financial capital is needed for building physical capital - machines and so on, so forth. With rise of robotics, nanotechnology, and 4D printing and all that, the investment required for plant and machinery will shrink, and you will have lot more distributed production activity going on, apart from, of course, if you are doing railroads, for example, if they remain very relevant in 50 years' time.

So physical infrastructure that goes into the business, which requires actual capital, will be distributed and not as capital intensive financially. Now, if that changes and balance tilts towards the mental capacity, the talent and human, it will create a very interesting dilemma for businesses. Do they listen to the financial world or do they work differently? And that value, which is at the moment captured by labour and capital, and capital gets more, we know from history, that balance is likely to change in, I think, next 50 years.

And that means value proposition for that - it has serious consequences, by the way, because if large number of people are going to depend on pension funds, living 70, 80, 90 years of age, and we say the returns on financial capital will go down, because the demand for financial capital will go down, it's a very serious social issue. But in business value terms, it is a very interesting thing.

I think innovation and inclusive value creation and sustenance requires quite a bit of organisational adaptation, too. So we'll have to give up this notion of functionally defined set of activities that different people do in the organisations, because increasingly, we would see both on the decision making and the process of delivering value, you'll be working in multi-functional, quite disparate set of people bringing different values from production to marketing to customer service and so on.

And there is no secret about bringing different perspectives on the same problem to generate some high quality solution, because if you've brought only small number of people to bear upon a problem, you are losing out so much. So inclusivity in that sense is important, particularly in global context, because, as we said, the problems, as well as opportunities, are all around globe, in terms of serving and delivering value.

And therefore, to bring perspective on a value proposition from different cultural or national or traditional backgrounds, you need to have organisation is set up for work environment in which people from different cultural backgrounds can work together and be ensured that there are no barriers for them to come together. Where you have diversity, you want to be inclusive, but how do you remove those barriers so that customer or whoever your stakeholder you are serving gets the best value out of it? And start with at home, in the learning environment at OU, and tell us how we could do things differently and take your ideas as students so that we can inform our choices in future.

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3 Creating new types of organisational value

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The third and final section of this course explores how organisations can create new types of value that transcend traditional economic and business value perspectives. This course has focused on the ways an organisation can create and sustain value across its various functions. Building on these insights, this section will explore how technologies are enabling types of organisational value which go beyond established ideas of efficiency, competition, and profit. Products, processes, and activities can instead be oriented and improved for fostering goals of greater inclusion, collaboration, equality, and knowledge sharing. These new types of value can be used to not only contribute to broader social goals but also create more sustainable organisations. Finally, these new value propositions can be enhanced by using established models of value creation, as well as play a crucial role in preparing organisations for more ‘disruptive’ social, economic, and technological changes in the near future.

Figure 4

Long description

3.1 The need for new types of value

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The 21st century has brought with it a range of fresh challenges for organisations. Climate change, growing inequality, political uncertainty, and economic insecurity continue to pose threats to the short- and long-term health of organisations. Across sectors, these issues are leading to a progressively more unhealthy and demotivated workforce who are demanding more than zero-hour contracts and stagnating wages. These mounting problems have led increasingly to a reconsideration of dominant economic values. Our once sacred market principles of productivity, efficiency, and profit are gradually being challenged.

On the other hand, these challenges also offer a profound opportunity. They represent the possibility of exploring and experimenting with new types of value and economic paradigms. To this end, academics, policy makers, and entrepreneurs are recognising that past models may be ethically and practically inferior to newer ones currently surfacing. The traditional embrace of the free-market is being supplemented and even potentially replaced by an emphasis on sharing, collaboration, ecological survival, and human welfare. In place of established “economic" value are more expansive ideas of “social" and “human" value. These encompass renewed desires for improving the rights of workers and placing environmental concerns as a priority.

Activity 5 Producing ‘human-centred’ value

Allow around 60 minutes for this activity

1. Watch the following video created by the International Labour Organisation:

Work for a Brighter Future: Video (LINK)

2. Now take a look over the accompanying ILO website, which introduces a report from the Global Commission on the Future of Work:

Work for a Brighter Future: Website (LINK)

3. Read the following sections of the report (which will be directly linked below):

Executive Summary (pp. 9-14)
Seizing the Moment (pp. 17-24)

Work for a Brighter Future: Report (LINK)

4. Now answer the following question in 3–5 sentences:

How would you summarise what they mean by a ‘human-centred agenda’?

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Answer

While you could have described a human-centred agenda in a range of different ways, it should be similar to how the report author defined it in the report on p. 11:

‘…strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice.’

5. Look at the table on p. 51 of the report, outlining the ten points for realising a ‘human-centred agenda’ based on three ‘investment’ goals. Afterwards, search for examples of organisations that are trying to achieve at least 1 of the 3 main goals of this ‘human-centred agenda’:

Increasing investment in people’s capabilities.
Increasing investment in the institutions of work.
Increasing investment in decent and sustainable work.

3.2 Creating new types of organisational value

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The previous section highlighted the rise of new types of value creation. But how can these be applied to organisations? To an extent, this shift in values (and perceptions of value) echoes the previously acknowledged need to expand economic value to broader notions of organisational value. The overriding fixation with making profit was viewed as too narrow a focus for ensuring broader organisational success. Instead, as mentioned earlier in this course, organisational value concentrated on reorienting and transforming organisational needs for improving the overall value for a diverse range of stakeholders. Similarly, new types of technological and social value are attempting to expand organisational capabilities and processes in order to benefit consumers, workers, and citizens.

Organisations have always been more than just vehicles for creating economic value. They have always had to encompass the need to make profit with broader social and political expectations. Previously, this could have included balancing desires for industrial democracy by employees with the demands for employers to remain economically competitive. Likewise, businesses were forced to make products that simultaneously could be made quickly, and at reduced costs in labour and material, while meeting governmental regulations regarding health and safety. More recently, employees want their employment to provide them with not only professional success, but also personal wellbeing. The notions of ‘work-life balance’ and ‘wellbeing’ are now mainstream organisational values.

What makes this era so potentially different is that technologies and new social values are seeking to completely transform organisational processes and redefine how they envision value. Old notions driving organisational value – including efficiency, productivity, competition, and profit – are being augmented and even directly challenged by desires to design institutional processes and activities to enhance individual freedom, promote environmental sustainability, and contribute to human welfare overall.

The table below highlights how these new types of value are being translated into new types of organisational value.

Table 5 New types of organisational value

New Type of Value	Description	Translated into organisational value
Environmental Sustainability	This value focuses on ensuring that all goods, services, processes, and activities do not negatively impact the natural environment, and can have a positive effect on its renewal.	This shifts the emphasis from offsetting the environmental damage caused by an organisation (via charitable donations or internal processes) to the ways that sustainability must be a guiding principle resulting from all primary and secondary activities.
Social Inclusiveness	This value highlights the need to ensure that all decision-making is free of social bias, and that different voices are heard and represented in organisational decision-making.	This shifts the emphasis from creating a more diverse workforce to one in which a diverse and inclusive community of producers and users input into the goals, processes, and outputs of an organisation.
Personalisation	This value prioritises the need to customise processes and services to meet the individual needs and desires of both producers and users.	This shifts the emphasis from mass production to more personalised forms of working and consuming.
Collaboration	This value stresses a culture of sharing knowledge and skills, and working together.	This shifts the emphasis from competition to more collaborative models of working and consuming.
Community-Led	This value concentrates on allowing producers and users to work together to shape the organisation and its delivery of goods and services.	This shifts the emphasis from being market-driven and responsive to customer trends to allowing a community of producers and users to co-create and transform existing organisational processes, as well as its goods and services.
Open-Sourced	This value involves making all information about the organisation freely available to other organisations and individuals, so that they can use it to help develop shared good practices.	This shifts the emphasis from organisations safeguarding their information and practices from ‘the competition’ to gain a market advantage to instead finding ways to share information to gain a collaborative advantage.

Critically, though, not all organisations trying to create new types of value share these progressive values. Indeed, many are focused on using these new technologies to make more money while their overall social impact is of secondary importance at best. Nevertheless, they do represent a novel approach to starting, funding, and operating a business – one that is much less focused on selling discrete goods and services than it is on connecting people to share their own goods and services. Companies such as Uber and Airbnb signify not so much a departure from capitalism, but its technological updating.

3.3 Creating new types of value across business functions

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This section so far has sought to highlight the need to create new types of organisational value. This can entail reorienting existing processes to achieve more expansive ‘social’ value propositions, or transforming how they realise traditional economic ones. However, as this course has stressed throughout, creating and sustaining organisational value is always multifaceted and runs across its different functions. The same is true for the creation of new organisational value. It is imperative, therefore, to explore in more depth how these new types of value can be manifested within organisational functions – particularly operations management, financial accounting, and business intelligence.

Operations management is a good place to start as it encompasses the entirety of an organisation’s processes and activities. Novel perspectives linked to ‘lean’ management dramatically transform how organisations design their activities and relate to external suppliers and customers. It also reveals the ways that environmental concerns have ushered in ideas of a ‘circular economy’, transforming organisations to maximise their sustainability and minimise their carbon footprint. Similarly, new technologies are poised to impact the very way organisations are operated and managed. Digital fabrication, for instance, in which products are made to design through 3D printing, could revolutionise production practices, leading to distributed manufacturing in which people can use agreed upon designs to make products locally, wherever they are in the world.

In terms of financial accounting, the ways in which organisations are financed and allocate their budgets could be rapidly shifting. The traditional model of seeking out a large private or public funding source is being transformed. Crowdfunding, for example, allows for a more democratic funding model that is not reliant on corporate shareholders or government stakeholders – ideas can become a reality more quickly, with less market or stakeholder pressure. Likewise, participatory budgeting within municipalities could be adopted within workplaces, providing a high-tech platform for empowering employees to contribute to organisational priorities and strategies.

Business intelligence can also play a vital role in this new value creation. At present, the data analysis and information systems are specifically oriented toward established value frameworks such as improving efficiency, productivity, and profits. This need not be the case. Rather, they could be channelled into creating analytics that track the value added by managers and corporate executives, thereby creating a fairer allocation of resources. Or they could assist people in finding a distributed manufacturing centre that best fits their geographical and user needs. What is crucial, in this respect, is that such ‘intelligence’ is directed toward the innovative creation of new value within and across different organisatonal functions.

Activity 6 Creating new types of value across organisational functions

Allow around 30 minutes for this activity

Watch the following video clip from the Open University documentary ‘The Future of Empowerment Today’, in which OU academic Dr. Cinzia Priola interviews members of the organisation ‘Disrupt Disability’. You may want to find out more about Disrupt Disability at the organisation's website.

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Video 3 The future of empowerment today

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SUBJECT

So we are currently in a maker space. And there are all sorts of digital fabrication tools and machines around us. We have 3D printers, laser cutters, cnc mills. So it's very, very user led. And our main focus is really on facilitating that so that people can have wheelchairs that are designed for them.

We were inspired, or Rachael Wallach, who's the founder of Disrupt Disability, was inspired by an organisation called Enable, who she came across when she was on a trip to, I think, Jordan.

RACHAEL WALLACH

They were using 3D printing to support refugees of the Syrian crisis. They showed me a 3D printed prosthetic hand that they'd made for a boy who lost his fingers in the conflict. They'd fully customised it to his body.

And they'd even made it look like Ben 10 hand. So it was customised to his preferences. But the total cost was only $39 to make.

SUBJECT

Rachael did some research and found out for the reason that they were able to do this was because they were working with a community, an online community of designers, who were voluntarily designing and contributing their designs for prosthetics and that each of those designs could then be 3D printed. We think the people who are best placed to understand what they want from a wheelchair and articulate that are the people who use wheelchairs themselves.

RACHAEL WALLACH

So imagine you're trying to climb a mountain, but you're wearing a pair of stilettos. And they're three sizes too small. It would be pretty difficult.

And that's exactly what it's like to use a wheelchair that hasn't been customised to your body, your lifestyle, and your environment. The problem is, with traditional manufacture, customization is really expensive. So currently, a customised wheelchair cost about 2,000 pounds.

SUBJECT

At the moment, the wheelchair market is very different, to say, the market for glasses. I wear glasses because I can't really see very well without them. I go to opticians, and I receive a prescription for my glasses.

But from that point onwards, the experience of buying a pair of glasses is very much like the experience of buying a pair of shoes. It's down to my tastes. It's down to what I want to look like.

But wheelchairs, that process is quite medicalized. Somebody is immediately treated in the process of choosing their wheelchair as a disabled person. Whereas in my experience of buying glasses, I have never once been treated as a disabled person. And partly that's because there is not much customization in terms of wheelchairs. Wheelchair design has been quite static.

RACHAEL WALLACH

Previously, the only people involved in wheelchair design were medical professionals, engineers, designers, and perhaps, a wheelchair user at some point in that process. But the range of people we've been able to inform is much broader. So we've got artists. We had a locksmith. We've had people from an incredibly broad range of different disciplines.

And I think this kind of creativity is something that we'll start to see more of. Because distributed manufacture and digital fabrication really enable these kinds of collaboration.

INTERVIEWER

Can you tell us a bit more? What is digital fabrication? And what is distributed manufacturing?

SUBJECT

Sure. So digital fabrication is kind of what it says on the tin. It's using digital means, using something like CAD, computer aided design, to design and then manufacture. And distributed manufacturing means that you can manufacture anywhere.

You don't have to manufacture in a central location. So as opposed to where traditionally you might have a workshop where you're making all your wheelchairs, and then you ship those wheelchairs to the customer, we're looking at actually how can we take that manufacturing process much closer to the customer. So how could somebody go to their local maker space or their local manufacturer and have something made for them?

INTERVIEWER

Where is Disrupt Disability now?

SUBJECT

The point we've come to is we've started to look at creating a modular wheelchair system. We realised it's quite difficult for somebody who's never made a wheelchair before to make a whole wheelchair. And also that, for the user, they might have an element of their chair-- for example, the caster fork, the front wheels-- that they might say they need to change it.

So for their day-to-day life, when they're working in an office in London, they want something quite small and neat and discreet. But at the weekends, they like going for long walks in the Lake District. And therefore, they need something that can handle the rougher terrain.

INTERVIEWER

As you would do with a bike

SUBJECT

Yeah, as you would do with a bike. So having something that's able to be interchanged, we see as something that could really benefit both the user and the designer and the maker.

INTERVIEWER

Could you see this organisational model working for other organisations in the present and in the future?

SUBJECT

Yeah. I think, actually, it's a really good way to start a business. If you start with your users, your customers, the problem that you're trying to solve, and really make that very human, and then try and build your solutions out of that.

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Once you have watched the video, fill out the table below. It asks you to match organisational activities and functions to the new types of value. Each activity connects to one new type of value, but may be linked to more than one organisational function.

Organisational Activity

Allows each user to design their wheelchair based on their specific lifestyle and needs.
Uses digital fabrication technology as part of maker space to easily and inexpensively design and print prototypes.
Exploits distributed manufacturing methods to cheaply produce wheelchairs for users while reducing their carbon footprint.
Involves a community of designers that go beyond medical professionals including artists, craftsmen, and wheelchair users themselves.
Designs are digitally and freely shared so they can be drawn upon and expanded by other members of the designer community.
People are part of a community of users and makers ranging from global design network to globally connected collection of distributed manufacturers, allowing individuals to have access to both the use and production of these wheelchairs.

Organisational Function

Operations Management
Financial Accounting
Business Intelligence

Table 6 Value and organisational activity

New Type of Value	Organisational Activity	Organisational Function
Environmental Sustainability	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 1	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 2
Social Inclusiveness	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 3	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 4
Personalisation	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 5	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 6
Collaboration	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 7	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 8
Community/User-led	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 9	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 10
Openness	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 11	Table 6 Value and organisational activity 12

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Table 6 Value and organisational activity

New Type of Value	Organisational Activity	Organisational Function
Sustainability	Exploits distributed manufacturing methods to cheaply produce wheelchairs for users while reducing their carbon footprint.	Operations Management Financial Accounting
Inclusiveness	Involves a community of designers that go beyond medical professionals including artists, craftsmen, and wheelchair users themselves.	Business Intelligence
Personalisation	Allows each user to design their wheelchair based on their specific lifestyle and needs.	Operations Management
Collaboration	Uses digital fabrication technology as part of maker space to easily and inexpensively design and print prototypes.	Financial Accounting Business Intelligence
Community/User-led	People are part of a community of users and makers ranging from global design network to globally connected collection of distributed manufacturers, allowing individuals to have access to both the use and production of these wheelchairs.	Operations Management Business Intelligence
Openness	Designs are digitally and freely shared so they can be drawn upon and expanded by other members of the designer community.	Operations Management Business Intelligence Financial Accounting

Conclusion

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We hope you have enjoyed this free course, Understanding organisational value. You should now have a clearer understanding of what organisational value is, and how it can be created within and across different business functions. You should also be able to identify new types of organisational value. Lastly, you should begin to recognise the potential of translating these new types of value into innovative forms of organisational value.

If you are interested in organisational value then please take a look at our new MBA.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University module B872 Creating and sustaining value.

The module teaches you how to create and sustain organisational value within and across a range of business functions. In particular, it focuses on value creation associated with Operations Management, Financial Accounting, and Business Intelligence. It highlights how organisations can add benefit for their diverse stakeholders and society in both the short term and long term.

The module also examines the emergence of new types of organisational value. It reveals the evolution from a narrow focus on economic value prioritising profits to a broader desire to create organisational value concentrating on positively impacting a firm’s members, customers, shareholders, and wider society. It then examines how organisational value is being expanded, due to technology and shifts in economic and social knowledge, to embrace a more collaborative, inclusive, and socially-oriented notion of value.

Acknowledgements

The Open University — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This free course was written by Peter Bloom. It was first published in April 2020.

This free course is based on the Open University module B872 Creating and sustaining value.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Images

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Figure 2: Photo by Ivan Bertolazzi from Pexels

Figure 3: Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Figure 4: Photo by Fauxels from Pexels

OU value creator Jack: ASDF_MEDIA/shutterstock

OU value creator Jeanine: LDprod/Shutterstock

OU value creator Jordan: LarsZ/Shutterstock

OU value creator Daniel: Monkey Business Images/shutterstock

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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