What is value? - A study of the concept of value and its meanings from a corporate perspective

Sammanfattning: Purpose: The purpose was to gain insight in how companies within the IIRC Pilot Programme describe value and value creation. Methnology: The study was conducted by adopting a qualitative, inductive and interpretative approach. The study was an empirical observation of five companies participating in the IIRC Pilot Programme. Theoretical perspective: A literature review was conducted, where classical economic theories as well as contemporary theories and literature related to value and value creation were considered. Empirical foundation: The collected empirical data consisted of information from corporate reports from five companies participating in the IIRC Pilot Programme, as well as information from four interviews with respondents from the examined companies. Conclusions: The study showed that companies do not provide a precise definition of the term value. However, some concepts stood out as more important than others when companies described value, such as the concept of shared value. Further, it was concluded that the incentives behind value creation influenced in which contexts the companies stated that value creation took place. Furthermore, a distinction between shared value engagements of which the economic value was measurable and the ones that were meant to help the company maintaining its social license to operate were made. Finally, it was concluded that the many different contexts in which value creation is described, leads to that the final conclusion of that what value actually is and what value that is communicated still lies in the hands of the companies.