5. Values: A Seedbed for Commercial Value

The management of values is a value-creating process. We have seen how the values cockpit can help control this process in practice. What now needs to be done is to dig deeper and uncover the commercial mechanisms that make corporate values a seedbed for new commercial value. Before examining these mechanisms in detail, another look at the case studies is worthwhile. They seem to imply that values-oriented management is the natural reserve of owner-managed businesses, and that there are forces stopping listed companies from following suit. This assumption seems reinforced by the idea that listed companies differ from family-run businesses that think in terms of generations, in not years and quarters, in that they are caught in the straitjacket of ad-hoc reporting and decisions taken under duress and time pressures. This seems to prevent them from seeing the long-term perspective. This impression that many listed companies are forced into short-term ways of thinking and economic practice is also confirmed by the findings of Jim Collins. His studies gave impressive proof that truly excellent companies only manage to secure their dominance in the markets over the years because they have committed themselves in full to long-term goals and a long-term culture.

It is right to assume that owner-managed or family-run businesses are sustained by strong values simply by force of the long-termism inherent in their nature—think of the traditions and family values that many owner-managed companies like to herald, especially when selling branded goods, such as the associations of “smallholder farmers” who define their freedom in terms of family ownership and independence from corporate structures. It is, however, just as right to stress that all other companies are also powered by their own intrinsic values. Just like any social system, a company is the product of people coming together, sustained by a shared notion of certain values and their benefits. From this grows the specific systemic culture that forms the very being of the company.