Toward a Stakeholder Paradigm in Corporate Produtivty Measurement and Analysis

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, the idea of reporting corporate value-added as a measure of performance would probably be seen by the financial community, at best as something of a controversy: return (profit) on investment is the only meaningful indicator. However in very recent years, countries like United Kingdom and Singapore are beginning to realise the potential viability of the value added concept as a meaningful measure of corporate performance. In 1984, for instance the Singapore Society of Accountants promulgated the Recommended Accounting Practice No.3 — Reporting Value-added Information — as a guide to publicly-listed companies. In U.K. attempts were also made, as in the manner of the Corporate Report, to encourage companies to provide relevant value-added data. Japanese corporations had been known to Emphasize corporate value-added productivity as an overall measure of performance. Impetus towards value added measure can be speculated as centrally-planned economies like China and the Soviet Union are beginning to realise that the practical route to economic progress is via the capitalistic vehicle of ‘profitmaking’ corporation – perhaps re-cast in an ideologically more palatable social entity – value-added creating and sharing corporation. This paper explores the use of the measure of value-added as a the primary stakeholder measure of corporate performance: using Singapore’s RAP as a methodological starting point for discussion.