SHARED VALUE STRATEGY: A SUSTAINABLE STAKEHOLDER APPROACH TO SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

“In recent years, business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental and economic problems”. Shared value gurus Porter and Kramer (2011) argue that a big part of the problem lies with business being trapped in an outdated approach to value creation. They propose that the solution lies in the establishment of practices that enhance the competitiveness of a business while simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates. They popularize the concept of creating shared value (CSV) which has received enormous attention among management scholars and sophisticated business leaders. Yet, to date, the work on shared value has been largely conceptual and few empirical study has focused on how the concept can be implemented in practice. This paper integrates scholarly literatures and the author’s decades of business experiences to study strategic initiatives that would bring about high shared value for enterprise and society in practice. An extensive empirical study at various project sites is initiated to prove relevancy of CSV theory in a real world context with the aim to contribute to the knowledge-base of shared value strategy. The paper discusses implementation plans for two of these project sites where an interventional tool from tactical urbanism movement is the shared value initiative. This paper also presents the rationale and the key elements for the strategic construct.