Measuring value creation for stakeholders: a contribution from the empirical research

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute with the growing discussions among value creation through the lens of stakeholder theory. Starting from an important gap identified in previous studies, according to what improved methods are needed to measure value creation for stakeholders, this research employed a systematic review of the literature with the main objective of providing a full set of metrics for stakeholders’ value creation based on reviewing the literature composed of articles drawn with an empirical quantitative method, and then suggests a new approach to measure value creation for stakeholders based on filling the gaps identified. Through the results is possible to see how many different ways to measure value creation are being employed by scholars, what can be a result of the challenge already discussed in the literature about what means “value” for each stakeholder group. Despite, it was possible to see that value still much related to the monetary value - financial return for shareholders, remuneration for employees, and product’s price for customers. Few metrics are used for intangible values, whose importance as value drivers from a utilitarian point of view had already been highlighted in the literature. The analysis performed and gaps identified opened space to suggest a different set of indicators to measure the value created for primary stakeholders, taking their different value drivers in account. These results shed some light on the academic discussions, showing scholars new variables that can be added in their researches in order to have a better picture of the whole stakeholder value creation system, and has also practical implications for managers, whose challenge is creating as much value as possible for all their company’s stakeholders.