Content area
Full Text
Abstract: Integrated Value Creation, or IVC, is an important evolution of the corporate responsibility and sustainability movement. It combines many of the ideas and practices already in circulation, like corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability and creating shared value (CSV), but signals some important shifts, especially by focusing on integration and value creation. More than a new concept, IVC is a methodology for turning the proliferation of societal aspirations and stakeholder expectations, including numerous global guidelines, codes, and standards covering the social, ethical, and environmental responsibilities of business, into a credible corporate response without undermining the viability of the business. Practically, IVC helps a company integrate its response to stakeholder expectations (using materiality analysis) through its management systems (using best governance practices) and value chain linkages (using life cycle thinking). This integration is applied across critical processes in the business, such as governance and strategic planning, product/service development and delivery, and supply and customer chain management. Ultimately, IVC aims to be a tool for innovation and transformation, which will be essential if business is to become part of the solution to our global challenges, rather than part of the problem.
Keywords: Integrated value, sustainability, social responsibility, CSR, quality, shared value, integration, management systems, standards
Integrated Value Creat ion (IVC) is a concept and practice that has emerged from a long tradition of think ing on the role of business in soc iety (Carroll, 1999). It has its roots in what many today call corporate (soc ial) responsibility, or CSR, corporate citizenship, business ethic s, and corporate sustainab ility (Visser et al., 2010). These ideas also have a long history but can be seen to have evolved primarily along tw o strands - let's call them streams of consciousness: the responsibility stream and the sustainability stream.
Two Streams Flowing into One
The responsibility stream had its origins in the mid-to-late 1800s with industrialists like John D. Roc kefeller and Dale Carneg ie setting a precedent for community philanthropy, while others like John Cadbury and John H. Patterson seeded the employee welfare movement (Carroll, 2008). Fast forw ard a hundred years or so, and we see the first social responsibility codes start to emerge, such as the Sullivan Princ ip les in 1977 and the subsequent...