Zoekresultaten

Towards the drivers of value creation in the biogas industry

The Dutch biogas industry is developing slowly and in many instances still unviable. Insights in the drivers of value creation may help to create viable biogas business networks. This research explores these related drivers and accordingly, proposes a new and comprehensive definition of a driver of value creation. This definition focuses on the enabling and inhibiting factors of value creation in a business network and forms the backbone of three case studies. The results suggest the presence of four specific drivers as necessary for a viable biogas business network: stability and certainty, partner alignment, local opportunities and economies of scale.

Value at Play

The balancing act of optimised value creation

In BOP ventures the notion of “selling to the poor” has steadily been replaced by business approaches that suggest sustainable value creation. This has certain implications, in particular the development of strategies that serve triple bottom-line goals. These include economic, social and environmental benefits, in other words, the well known goals of people-planet-profit. However to optimise value-creation one ideally needs to follow a strategy that is based on some form of conceptual model that can serve as a frame of reference. This paper proposes such a conceptual model. The research was undertaken in 8 BOP projects involving multinational information and communication technology companies in Africa. ICT is relevant here because of frequently high expectations that it contributes positively to development goals. A study of the BOP literature reveals that several elements need consideration when trying to create value in developing areas. In addition it emerges that these elements are somehow interdependent. Using information found in the literature as guide a study of 8 cases was undertaken. The research approach was the case study method and the data was analysed for emerging patterns. Primary and secondary data was collected through interviews as well as a close study of archival and other sources. The analysis revealed three high level factors that may need to be aligned in order to ensure optimised value creation of BOP ventures. These three factors are BOP strategy, partnerships, and products & services development. It is also confirmed that neither BOP strategy nor partnerships nor products/service development can be synthesised independently from the rest. There is a delicate balance and interaction between the three where all three are interdependent and mutually influence each other.

The Role of Coopetition on Innovation, Value Creation and Value Capture

Coopetition (simultaneous competition and collaboration between firms) is an important driver for innovation, as competing organizations benefit from pooling resources and ideas for new products, processes and achieving benefits such as collective reputation. However, a key issue facing such relationships is the notion of value creation and capture–how does value get created and distributed amongst competing partners. This issue becomes increasingly salient when the coopetition includes multiple actors and common pool resources such as land and water. In this symposium, we bring together scholars who are investigating coopetition between different actors such as direct competitors, actors from the same industry, and organizations sharing similar collective goals such as sustainable manufacturing. In showcasing this diversity of context we shed light on the notion of value creation and capture in coopetitive relationships.

The impact of multiple value creation on management control systems

We are currently in a transition moving from a linear economy grounded on economic value maximization based on material transformation to a circular economy. Core of this transition is organising value preservation from various yet interlinked perspectives. The underlying fundamental shift is to move away from mere financial value maximization towards multiple value creation (WCED, 1987; Jonker, 2014; Raworth, 2017). This implies moving from mere economic value creation, to simultaneously and in a balanced way creating ecological and social value. A parallel development supporting this transition can be observed in accounting & control. Elkington (1994) introduced the triple bottom line (TBL) concept, referring to the economic, ecological and social impact of companies. The TBL should be seen more as a conceptual way of thinking, rather than a practical innovative accounting tool to monitor and control sustainable value (Rambaud & Richard, 2015). However, it has inspired accounting & control practitioners to develop accounting tools that not only aim at economic value (‘single capital’ accounting) but also at multiple forms of capital (‘multi capital’ accounting or integrated reporting). This has led to a variety of integrated reporting platforms such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRC), Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes (DJSI), True Costing, Reporting 3.0, etc. These integrated reporting platforms and corresponding accounting concepts, can be seen as a fundament for management control systems focussing on multiple value creation. This leads to the following research question: How are management control systems designed in practice to drive multiple value creation?

Unpacking value creation and value capture in collaborative networks for sustainability

Our study elucidates collaborative value creation and private value capture in collaborative networks in a context of sustainability. Collaborative networks that focus on innovative solutions for grand societal challenges are characterized by a multiplicity and diversity of actors that increase the complexity and coordination costs of collective action. These types of inter-organizational arrangements have underlying tensions as partners cooperate to create collaborative value and compete to capture or appropriate value on a private or organizational level, resulting in potential and actual value flows that are highly diffuse and uncertain among actors. We also observe that network participants capture value differentially, often citing the pro-social (e.g. community, belonging, importance) and extrinsic benefits of learning and reputation as valuable, but found it difficult to appropriate economic or social benefits from that value. Differential and asymmetric value appropriation among participants threatens continued network engagement and the potential collective value creation of collaborative networks. Our data indicates that networked value creation and capture requires maintaining resource complementarity and interdependency among network participants as the network evolves. We develop a framework to assess the relational value of collaborative networks and contribute to literature by unpacking the complexities of networked value creation and private value capture in collaborative networks for sustainability.