Modelo de análisis de la acción: la criatura rawlsiana

In testing the research questions and hypotheses, the notion of perceived corporate value is central. Moreover, from the perspective of this investigation, there needs to be an

appreciation that examining any ‘reevaluation’ of corporate value is not about assessing corporate value3 itself but about how corporate value might be perceived to alter. The distinction is subtle but fundamental definitionally, and it opens the topic to enquiry. Indeed, Hughes (2013), in discussing financial versus non-financial elements for an article in HBR, stressed how wide-ranging a concept and difficult to measure corporate value is, and how ‘Measurement of value has been mooted in the past but never achieved broad success due to the variable nature of the concept in organizations’. Furthermore, it could encompass shared value, too, as Porter and Kramer (2006, 2011) offered based on a fostering of the relationship between business and the community in which it operates. Moreover, any attempt to define corporate value and its increase inevitably meets problems when there is a deliberation of the concept from the perspective of different constituencies’ interests.4

1_{As will become increasingly apparent in the forthcoming chapters, it is the terminology embedded in} narrative that is reflective of corporate value in its various forms.

2_{Stiglitz (2017) comments on this possibility of whether lessons were likely learnt following the financial} crisis.

3_{Additionally, the concept is not to be confused with corporate core values, a set of beliefs held by a company} (see eg Freeman et al, 1988).

17

Yet, rather than an attempt to define1 and analyse corporate value, the research focus in this investigation instead examines what it is thought to be at any given time and then compares that to another instant in time. The research thus considers, not any absolute measure, but the changing relative disposition managers had over the 2004-2012 period to promote the interests of a particular constituency for value creation.

Perceived corporate value is thus representative of a an altering view with respect to the relative merits of shareholder primacy, stakeholder primacy, a short-term perspective, and a long-term perspective, as managers within various organizations changed their particular perceptions. There is a similar conceptualization for a sense-of-urgency to act or not to act.

The context of perceived corporate value therefore offers an alternative approach to investigating the primacy debate, as it allows measurement. Consequently, the approach may make use of the fact that what organizations think is represented in what their managers and executives write; the terms they use, and which can be quantified. In this way, potential alterations to perceived corporate value due to managerial biases is assessed by examining how narrative in the form of original corpuses of annual reports changed in response to the effects of the financial crisis, between 2004 and 2012. By assessing the use of certain terms, these reports reflect the kinds of managerial responses concerning primacy orientation and temporality – or changes in their biases – and underlie efforts to succeed within the business environment operated in. Specifically looked at are, for example, the terms: price, efficiency and investor.

1_{This research confines itself to notions of corporate value. However, there is additionally a broad historical} context for attempting to define value going back to Aristotle in ancient Greece, around 360BCE. While more modern characterisations of value or its mediators have evolved a context so wide-ranging it includes from the philosophical, economic, and sociological, to the cognitive, developmental, and hormonal (see Stigler, 1950, for a useful review; Almquist et al, 2016, on price perception; and Myers, 2017, on behavioural mediators). Recent work in behavioural economics (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) has though brought the role of cognition to the forefront in understanding value; a link made between value and perception particularly pertinent to this investigation. See also http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/value-creation.html

18

The first corpus of narrative-based documentation examined over this period is, as noted above, for twenty FT250 listed UK companies. Various industrial sectors provide the source for these. For example, the utility infrastructure company Pennon, the transportation company National Express, and the gaming and Hard Rock Café owners Rank

Entertainment. The research then similarly considers narrative change during that time for the UK’s regulatory environment with respect to soft and hard law (utilizing, for example, the Corporate Governance Code and the Companies Act 2006 respectively). This corporate domain together with the regulatory domain form the primary corpuses examined.

Additionally, this research considers narrative change with respect to perceived corporate value for a variety of peripheral stakeholder organizations offering British business support or advice. These secondary corpuses include the CBI (Confederation of British Industry), the IOD (Institute of Directors) and the TUC (Trades Union Congress), and again looking at their annual reports1. Overall, such a multi-actor assessment allows an examination of changed perceptions concerning value creation across a section of the economy as the twelve stakeholder organizations met the challenges of the global financial meltdown. Fig 1.2 shows some of the complexity involved for corporate value perception by depicting the multi-actor economic segment used in this investigation. Moreover, reflexive processes, as indicated, add another layer of complexity to the dynamism of the system. Although at a deeper level, corporate narrative inputs can have limitations.2 Infusing narrative is a cultural grammar, which in some cases can operate restrictively. As Veldman and Willmott (2016, p.584) highlighted, there is a single loop form of reflexive learning with respect to the UK’s regulatory environment,3 with only minor changes ever made, and where there is a rejectionof ‘critical scrutiny of the presence, nature and mobilization of the

1_{Additional relevant topic reports for organizations where appropriate are also used - ie better quality data or} more reflective of perceived corporate value.

2_{The regulatory environment, for the purposes of this illustration, is engendered by the ‘politics’ input.} 3_{Specifically the Corporate Governance Code, though equally applicable to other documentation.}

19 Corporate value perception by observer

A multi-actor perspective of the corporate value creation