Farhatullah-Case7

The meaning of ‘value’ in purchasing, logistics and operations management

Mark Francisa*, Ron Fisherb, Andrew Thomasb and Hefin Rowlandsb

aCardiff School of Management, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK; bUniversity of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, UK

(Received 29 January 2014; accepted 5 March 2014)

We investigate the current conception of ‘value’ within the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing and supply, logistics and operations management. The research design entails a four-step content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles drawn from these disciplines. Based upon the application of this method, we found that the conception of value within these production-oriented disciplines is subject to a considerable interpretive viability issue. Our findings suggest four contributory factors to this issue: a lack of theoretical rigour; a lack of definitional rigour; a plethora of [undefined] value-related terms in circulation within the field; and a large variety of linguistic usages of these terms, with ‘value’ being used as a verb, adjective and noun. This has profound implications as it throws into question much extant research in this field. How, for example, is it possible to effectively study something that is inadequately defined? It also has sig- nificant practical implications, as how is it possible to design an effective or efficient production system or supply chain premised upon the principle of value if none of the actors have a common understanding or consensus of what value is?

Keywords: value; content analysis; purchasing; logistics; operations management; interpretive viability

1. Introduction

The terms ‘value’ and ‘value add’ have long been a salient feature of the vocabulary of management (Neap and Celik 1999). Van de Ven (1992) in his reflection on the nature of the strategy process muses that the term ‘process’ is one of the most widely used words in the management lexicon. In his article he develops three interpretations of the concept of process that are most widely used within the management and organisational literature. He subsequently argues logically that the interpretation of the term ‘process’ that is adopted by a researcher influences the research questions that s/he asks, the methods employed and consequently the contribution made to theory. Van de Ven’s (1992) article has left an indelible impression upon the minds of the authors of this paper, as we have reflected upon our collective experience and hypothesise that the terms ‘value’ and ‘value adding’ can be added to ‘process’ as among the most frequently used but ill-defined terms in common currency within business and management today. This is an issue of interpretive viabil- ity, whereby the lack of definition leaves room for practitioners, and indeed academics, to project their own interpreta- tions of the concept (after Benders and van Veen 2001).

If true, Van de Ven’s concern, in the guise of this interpretive viability issue, has very significant implications for both research and practice within the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing and supply, logistics and operations management (OM). Surely the concept of ‘value’ and ‘value adding’ is of fundamental importance to our contemporary conception of both the production system and the supply chain, which in turn are fundamental constructs within this field? Is it not also fundamental to the numerous contemporary operations and management paradigms (COMPs) that have presented themselves as improvement methodologies over the last three decades and have come to underpin these conceptions – such as Lean Thinking (Womack, Jones, and Roos 1990; Womack and Jones 1996), TQM (Fiegenbaum 1983), Six Sigma (Harry 1988; Pande, Neuman, and Cavanagh 2001) and Agility (Goldman and Nagel 1993; Christopher, Harrison, and van Hoek 1999). Do all members of the supply chain – or even all the functional members that represent the intra-firm production system – conceive of value in the same way when they communicate? Are we indeed all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ or are we building a Tower of Babel when we invoke the value-adding concept as a guiding principle for process and supply chain design and improvement?

To test our hypothesis regarding this issue requires a systematic analysis of the conception of value within the litera- ture. However, even a cursory examination reveals that the amount of material on the subject matter is vast and would require an extensive programme of research. Therefore, to initiate this programme, we undertook a pilot study that was designed to characterise the conception of value within the literature that was closely associated with practice, and

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

International Journal of Production Research, 2014 Vol. 52, No. 22, 6576–6589, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2014.903349

establish whether an interpretive viability issue existed within it. This is reported in Fisher et al. (2012), and we refer to this as ‘Phase-1’ for the remainder of our paper. Nevertheless, is important to briefly summarise this pilot study as it provides a contextual sensitisation for what follows within this paper.

The Phase-1 research design involved three procedural steps. The first step was to select an appropriate framework model for organising the material to be analysed. Porter’s (1985) value chain analysis (VCA) model was adopted for this on the basis that it is one of the most widely conveyed and influential invocations of the concept of value. We decided to delimit the literature by focusing only on the primary value-adding activities within this framework model. This equated to that literature pertinent to the purchasing, logistics, OM and marketing disciplines. The second step was to select an appropriate unit of analysis (UOA) or type of practice-related material to be evaluated within these disciplin- ary areas. After due consideration, we decided to use two UOAs. The first was the official dictionaries of the profes- sional bodies that represent these disciplinary areas within the UK. The second was the key textbooks used to educate undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development students who emerge as employees within these disciplines. The third procedural step was to then duly collect and analyse the resultant material.

Phase-1 analysis established that the concept of value was a core principle of all the disciplines analysed. It likewise affirmed that both marketing and the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing, logistics and OM have inherited their guiding conception of value from economics, within which a number of theories have been developed to explain the exchange value (price) between a buyer and seller of a good or service. However, the underlying theory differed between each of these discipline areas. Within the marketing literature that we analysed the conception of value was clearly founded upon utility theory (after Jevons 1970), which argues that the value (price) of a good or service is explained by the degree of utility, usefulness or satisfaction that is derived by the consumer from its consumption. By contrast, the production-oriented field was found generally to embrace the cost of production theory of value (after Smith 1997), which argues that the value (price) of a good or service is the sum of its costs of production (labour, capi- tal, land and taxation). Importantly, Phase-1 also validated that the concept of value does indeed suffer from a significant interpretive viability issue and that this was particularly notable within the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing, logistics and OM. Within this field, the terms ‘value’ and ‘value add’ were found to be a locution. They were deemed to be axiomatic, else reliant upon a teleological appeal to established disciplinary practices or traits. This latter finding was exemplified by Cousins et al. (2008, 150–151), who do not provide a definition of value but instead list supplier relationship management, contract negotiations and the provision of commercial acumen as activities that the purchasing function provide to add value to their host organisation. Likewise, Rushton, Oxley, and Croucher (2004, 62–63) provide no definition of value. However, they instead offer time-reliable services, assembly, repacking, refurbishment and pack- aging returns as examples of ‘value added logistics services’. Phase-1 therefore highlighted the ubiquity of a tacit under- standing of the concept of value within the practitioner-oriented literature analysed. Such an approach is to appeal to ‘common sense’ rather than definitional rigour.

This paper reports upon ‘Phase-2’ of the research programme indicated above. It builds upon the two practitioner- oriented UOAs evaluated during the previous phase by analysing a third UOA in the form of literature associated with the academy. This UOA is peer-reviewed journal articles. The research objective of this is to characterise the current conception of value within those articles associated with the production-oriented disciplines listed above and hence pro- vide further insight into the interpretive viability issue and fundamental questions raised above.

With this in mind, the following section explains the research methodology that was developed to address this objec- tive. This is premised upon a research design that is founded upon the four-step content analysis (CA) method proposed by Seuring and Gold (2012). This is followed by a detailed discussion of the evidence yielded by this method, which is organised according to each of these four steps. Finally, we draw conclusions and consider the academic contributions and practical implications of this study before detailing our planned avenues of future research.

2. Methodology

The method adopted to address our research objective was CA, which is defined by Shapiro and Markoff (1997, 14) as ‘… any methodological measurement applied to text (or other symbolic materials) for social science purposes.’ and by Mayring (2008) as ‘… systematic, rule-governed, and theory-driven analysis of fixed communication’. CA was devel- oped in the field of communications research (Berelson 1952) and is an established method within social studies for analysing and understanding content such as words and symbols in written, audio and visual materials (Neuman 2003; Krippendorf 2004). CA also has a legacy of application within production, OM and supply chain management (SCM) research (see Montabon, Sroufe, and Narasimhan 2007; Hazen, Hall, and Hanna 2012; Seuring and Gold 2012; Grötsch, Blome, and Schleper 2013).

International Journal of Production Research 6577

The recent article published by Seuring and Gold (2012) details a method for conducting CA of peer-reviewed jour- nal articles within the SCM literature, and we adopted this as the basis for the research design of our study. Adhering to Kassarjian’s (1977) stipulation regarding the importance of following a clear and purposeful process structure, Seuring and Gold advance a four-step process model for conducting qualitative CA that is based upon the work of Mayring (2008). These four steps are inherent within Figure 1.

Step 1 is Material Collection, during which the UOA is identified. As per our study, in Seuring and Gold’s model, this UOA is usually the peer-reviewed journal article. This first step also entails a search across one or more biblio- graphic databases using a key word (KW) search strategy. For reasons of pragmatism, Seuring and Gold emphasise that the researcher will usually need to make an informed choice to distill the population of articles to be analysed into a manageable number and that this choice needs to be justified in relation to the research objective. This typically involves being selective in the range and/or time span of target journals searched. Step 2 is Descriptive Analysis, during which the formal characteristics of the articles matching the KW search criteria are assessed in order to provide back- ground information for the subsequent steps. This analysis includes establishing information about the distribution of these articles across their various host journals or time span. The Seuring and Gold (2012) note that additional filtering could be required at this juncture to ensure that the matching articles indeed deal with the research topic, and this might entail reading each article to validate its relevance. Establishing this set of resultant focal articles marks the advent of Category Selection (Step 3), during which the structural dimensions and analytical categories that are to be applied to the focal material are constituted using either an inductive or deductive approach. The last step (Step 4) is Material Evaluation, during which the focal articles are analysed according to the dimensions established above in order to establish the requisite insight. This entails excavating, coding and interpreting the content of these materials; typically applying some form of thematic analysis to terms and arguments in order to obtain insight into their manifest and/or latent meaning (see for example Avery et al. 2012). Further details regarding the procedures followed during the execution of each of these four steps are contained within the following section.

3. Discussion

3.1 Material collection (Step 1)

The first step in the research design was the most substantive of the four and was designed to systematically identify and collect all of the relevant articles that were subsequently to be distilled into the focal article set. In accordance with the guiding CA method proposed by Seuring and Gold (2012), we decided to adopt a bibliographic KW search strategy to achieve this. The two largest and most widely used bibliographic databases that encompass business and management articles were duly selected. The first of these was Business Source Premier (BSP), which claims to be the largest and most popular business research database. BSP covers all business disciplines and at the time of the study encompassed over 2200 journals of all types; 1100 of which were peer reviewed. The second database was Emerald Management Xtra (EMX), which claims to be the largest and most comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed management journals, and featured over 120 full text journals.

As highlighted by Seuring and Gold (2012), such a material collection exercise involves issues of pragmatism to ensure that the resultant population of articles that match the KW search strategy are distilled to a manageable number without compromising the research objective. We consequently decided to ensure that the KW search strategy would

Figure 1. Research design. Source: Seuring and Gold (2012).

6578 M. Francis et al.

encompass all of the highest quality production-oriented journals contained within the two above databases. Whilst we clearly recognise that journal quality is a subjective concept, we decided to use the Academic Journal Quality Guide produced by the Association of Business Schools (ABS 2010) as the point of reference to inform this exercise. This decision was based upon its ubiquity and familiarity among UK researchers. We refer to this publication as ‘ABS’ from this point onwards. ABS ranks journal quality according to a rating of 1–4*, with 4* being the highest. ABS lists 40 journals that are directly relevant to the objectives of this study under its subject code of ‘Operations, Technology and Management’ (OPSandTECH). There were no ‘4*’ articles and only one ‘4’ rated journal (Journal of Operations Man- agement). A comparison of this list with the content of the two above databases reveals that BSP and EMX collectively host 36 of these 40 titles, with 10 of them being hosted on both databases. Our aspiration to encompass the highest quality journals was therefore equated to be all of the ‘3–4’ rated journals contained on this ABS (OPSandTECH) list that were hosted on one or more of the databases. However, with reference to the VCA framework model discussed in Phase-1, it was notable that the highest quality logistics and purchasing journals were ranked only as ‘2’ by ABS. We therefore decided to ensure that our search criteria would encompass this lower category too.

Having determined this strategy, it needed to be translated into KWs. Reference to ABS (2010, 32) reveals that only nine of the eleven ‘3–4’ rated journals are actually hosted on the two databases1 and that all nine contain either the KW ‘operations’, ‘production’, ‘engineering’ or ‘supply chain management’ within their titles. One of these four KWs also appears in the title of two of the ‘2’ rated target journals. By adding the KWs ‘logistics’ and ‘purchasing’, we would ensure that all of the ‘2’ rated logistics and purchasing journals referred to above would also be encompassed within the resultant search strategy, and additionally, this would also embrace two of the ‘1’ rated journals in the target list. The use of these six words in a KW search strategy would therefore encompass a total of 18 of the 36 ABS listed OPSand- TECH journals that are hosted on BSP and EMX, including all of those rated at ‘3–4’. The resultant list of 18 journals are referred to as the ‘Target-ABS’ journals for the remainder of this paper. These are listed in Table 1 where in addition to the journal title and acronym, each table entry also notes that journal’s quality rating within ABS and whether it is hosted within the BSP and EMX bibliographic databases.

It should be noted, however, that such a KW search strategy would not be limited to only these Target-ABS listed journals, as any journal hosted on these two databases and containing any of these words within its title would be encompassed within such a search. This includes journals listed in ABS but under a different subject code to ‘OPSand- TECH’ and also journals that are not listed anywhere within ABS. These two classes of journals are referred to respec- tively, as ‘Other-ABS’ and ‘Non-ABS’ for the remainder of this paper.

Equipped with this insight it was possible to develop further a series of advanced KW search queries across the two databases in order to distill a population of matching journal articles. Because our intent was to identify and analyse those articles that specifically defined or discussed the concept of value within the production-oriented journals, we speculated that the word ‘value’ would appear in both the title and author-supplied KW fields of the most relevant

Table 1. Target-ABS production-oriented journals for bibliographic KW search.

No. Journal name Acronym ABS (2010) ranking BSP EMX

(1) Journal of Operations Management JOM 4 U ☓ (2) Production and Operations Management POM 3 U ☓ (3) International Journal of Production Economics IJPE 3 U ☓ (4) International Journal of Operations and Production Management IJOPM 3 U U (5) Supply Chain Management: An International Journal SCMIJ 3 U U (6) Manufacturing and Service Operations Management MSOM 3 U ☓ (7) IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management IEEE 3 U ☓ (8) International Journal of Production Research IJPR 3 U ☓ (9) Production Planning and Control PPC 3 U ☓ (10) Computers and Industrial Engineering CIE 2 U ☓ (11) International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications IJLRA 2 U ☓ (12) International Journal of Logistics Management IJLM 2 U U (13) International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management IJPDLM 2 U U (14) Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management JPSM 2 U ☓ (15) Journal of Construction Engineering and Management JCEM 2 U ☓ (16) Journal of Business Logistics JBL 2 U ☓ (17) European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management EJPSM 1 U ☓ (18) Journal of Supply Chain Management JSCM 1 U ☓

Source: ABS (2010, 32).

International Journal of Production Research 6579

T ab le

2 .

K W

se ar ch

q u er ie s an d su m m ar y o f fi n d in g s.

B u si n es s S o u rc e P re m ie r (B S P )

E m er al d M an ag em

en t X tr a (E M X )

S ea rc h

R ef .

S ea rc h q u er y an d re su lt sa

S ea rc h

R ef .

S ea rc h q u er y an d re su lt s

S 1

[S O = ‘o p er a ti o n s’ ] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 8 5 h it s

S 7

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘o p er a ti o n s’ ] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K ey w o rd s = ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 1 5 h it s

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (1 9 /8 5 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

IJ O P M

= 1 0 , P O M

= 7 , JO

M = 1 , M S O M

= 1

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (1 5 /1 5 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

IJ O P M

= 1 5

S 2

[S O = ‘p ro d u ct io n ’] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 6 2 h it s

S 8

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘p ro d u ct io n ’] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K ey w o rd s = ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 1 5 h it s.

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (6 1 /6 2 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) : IJ P R =

2 6 , IJ O P M

= 1 0 , P P C = 1 4 , P O M

= 7 , IJ P E = 4

IJ O P M

= 1 5

S 3

[S O = ‘e n g in ee ri n g ’] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 6 3 h it s

S 9

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘e n g in ee ri n g ’] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K ey w o rd s = ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 1 3 h it s.

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (1 3 /6 3 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) : C IE

= 2 , IE E E = 5 , JC

E M

= 6

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (0 /1 3 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

S 4

[S O = ‘ s u p p ly

ch a in

m a n a g em

en t’ ] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 4 h it s

S 1 0

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘s u p p ly

ch a in

m a n a g em

en t’ ] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ]

A N D

[K ey w o rd s = ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 1 3 h it s

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (4 /4

fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) : S C M IJ =

4 S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (1 3 /1 3 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

S C M IJ = 1 3

S 5

[S O = ‘l o g is ti cs ’] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 2 5 h it s

S 11

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘l o g is ti cs ’] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K ey w o rd s

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 3 9 h it s

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (2 5 /2 5 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

IJ P D L M

= 1 6 , IJ L R A = 4 , IJ L M

= 3 , JB

L = 2

S o u rc e o f th es e h it s (3 3 /3 9 fr o m

th e ta rg et

p ro d u ct io n -o ri en te d jo u rn al s) :

IJ P D L M

= 2 4 , IJ L M

= 9

S 6

[S O = ‘p u rc h a si n g ’] A N D

[T I = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K W

= ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 0 h it s

S 1 2

[J o u rn al

T it le = ‘p u rc h a si n g ’] A N D

[A rt ic le

T it le = ‘v a lu e’ ] A N D

[K ey w o rd s = ‘v a lu e’ ] …

re tu rn s 0 h it s.

T O T A L N O . H IT S = 2 3 9 …

re p re se n ti n g 2 2 2 d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T O T A L N O . H IT S = 9 5 …

re p re se n ti n g 8 0 d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T o ta l fr o m

T ar g et -A

B S Jo u rn al s = 1 0 5 /2 2 2 (4 7 % ) o f th e d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T o ta l fr o m

T ar g et -A

B S Jo u rn al s = 6 1 /8 0 (7 6 % ) o f th e d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T o ta l fr o m

N o n -T ar g et

Jo u rn al s = 11 7 /2 2 2 (5 3 % ) o f th e d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T o ta l fr o m

N o n -T ar g et

Jo u rn al s = 1 9 /8 0 (2 4 % ) o f th e d is cr et e ar ti cl es .

T o ta l fr o m

O th er -A

B S L is te d Jo u rn al s = 2 6 /2 2 2 (1 2 % )

T o ta l fr o m

O th er -A

B S L is te d Jo u rn al s = 1 4 /8 0 (1 8 % )

T o ta l fr o m

N o n -A

B S L is te d Jo u rn al s = 9 1 /2 2 2 (4 1 % )

T o ta l fr o m

N o n -A

B S L is te d Jo u rn al s = 5 /8 0 (6 % )

a B S P A d v an ce d S ea rc h F ie ld

C o d es : S O = ‘P u b li ca ti o n N am

e’ , T I = ‘( A rt ic le ) T it le ’, K W

= ‘A

u th o r- su p p li ed

K ey w o rd s’ .

6580 M. Francis et al.

articles. The resultant search queries are summarised in Table 2, with each of the 12 constituent queries being identified by a unique search reference code (S1–S12). Additional advanced search criteria were also applied to ensure relevance to the research objective; the BSP queries (S1–S6) were restricted to scholarly (peer reviewed) articles (all types), whilst the EMX queries (S7–S12) were similarly restricted to journal articles (all types). No date ranges were applied to any of these searches, with articles up to the present date (31 July 2013) being included.

The findings are interesting. Turning first to the six search queries across BSP (S1-S6) and these yielded a total of 239 hits of relevant articles that matched the KW search criteria. This represented 222 discrete articles, as those from POM and IJOPM were identified by both S1 and S2 and hence duplicated. All following use of the term ‘hit’ will there- fore be constrained to the context of the discrete articles only. Of these hits, 105 (47%) were from the Target-ABS jour- nals listed in Table 1. Of the remaining 117 articles, a further 26 (12%) were from Other-ABS listed journals, whilst the remaining 91 articles (41%) were drawn from Non-ABS journals. The six equivalent queries across EMX (S7–S12) yielded 95 hits. This represented 80 discrete articles as S7 and S8 hit the same (15) IJOPM articles. Of these discrete articles, 61 (76%) were from the Target-ABS journals and a further 19 (24%) were from Other-ABS sources.

When the inter-database duplication is taken into consideration, these 12 queries yielded a total of 261 discrete arti- cles drawn from 47 different journals. Of these articles, only 132 (51%) were from the Target-ABS journals. However, a further 33 (13%) were drawn from five Other-ABS listed journals, whilst the remaining 96 articles (37%) were derived from 27 different Non-ABS sources. When the distribution of the combined 165 articles from the Target and Other- ABS listed sources is analysed according to their ABS journal quality ranking, we found that 100 (38%) of the 261 arti- cles were derived from ‘3 to 4’ rated journals, and a further 51 (20%) from ‘2’ rated journals. The remaining 14 (5%) were from ‘1’ rated journals, although there were no articles yielded for either of the two ‘1’ rated journals contained within the Target-ABS journal list summarised in Table 1. The nature and distribution of these articles would therefore seem to substantiate the validity of our KW search strategy.

3.2 Descriptive analysis (Step 2)

Progressing to an analysis of the distribution of these articles across their source journals marks entry to the second step of the research design that was illustrated in Figure 1. Evaluation of the articles that matched our KW search strategy revealed that hits were recorded for 15 of the 18 Target-ABS journals. IJPR and IJPDLM provided the greatest number of discrete articles at 26 and 24, respectively. The three Target-ABS journals that yielded no relevant papers were JPSM, EJPSM and JSCM. A notable finding was that no relevant articles were identified from any purchasing journal (please refer to S6 and S12 within Table 1). This was surprisingly given the fundamental status of the value concept that was characterised within the purchasing literature studied during Phase-1 of this research. Whilst the Target-ABS journals provided the highest average number of hits as a set, some non-target journals contained a high number of relevant arti- cles. Most notable among these were the ABS ‘3’ rated Mathematics of Operations Research, which yielded 13 articles. Also, the Non-ABS Annals of Operational Research which contained 25 relevant articles; the second highest total of any of the 47 journals examined.

A chronological analysis of the articles that we collected during the Step 1 provides further insight. Figure 2 illus- trates the distribution of these articles by year of publication with separate trend lines being provided for each of the Target-ABS, Other-ABS, Non-ABS and cumulative (all) classes of journal articles that were identified during the previ- ous process step. The date range starts from 1980 because this was the year of publication of the earliest article found to match the search criteria. In the interest of comparability, this date range ends in 2012, as this was the last complete year for which data were collected.

The figure reveals high consistency in the degree of publication of relevant articles per annum (p.a.) between the three different classes of journals identified. This is a feature that is particularly pronounced in the period 2003–2012. This chart again underlines the validity of the Target-ABS journal class that for the full duration of this period, and similarly for the majority of the other years back to 1980, yielded more matching articles than the Other-ABS and Non-ABS classes combined. Figure 2 also reveals a clear growth trend throughout the date range analysed. The number of matching articles published throughout the 1980s was consistently low; ranging between 0 and 2 per p.a. This range increased to 2–10 throughout the 1990s, with an average of four matching papers being published p.a. during this period. Since 2000, and specifically since 2003, there has been another step increase. If the period 2003–2012 is considered, the number of match- ing publications ranged between 12 and 36 p.a., with an average of 25 per year. In 2012, the number of articles was at a zenith of 36. These findings suggest that academic interest in the topic of value is increasing.

In accord with the guidance offered by Seuring and Gold (2012) for the CA method that underpinned this study, it was necessary at this juncture to check whether all of these articles were indeed pertinent to the research objective. We consequently read the abstracts, and in many cases the full content, of the 261 discrete articles identified by the search

International Journal of Production Research 6581

strategy to evaluate whether each article discussed the conception of value in a meaningful and significant manner. This was an inherently subjective process.

This filtering exercise established that a large proportion of these articles were indeed irrelevant to the research objective and should be discounted from further consideration. For example, 25 of the articles had been hit because they contained the term ‘value stream’ in both their title and an author-supplied KW. However, the subsequent evaluation revealed that the content of these articles discussed the analysis, modelling, management and case examples associated with the value stream mapping techniques that have been popularised by Hines and Rich (1997) and Rother and Shook (1998). None of them either defined or discussed the underlying concept of value itself. This finding was also true for many other articles containing common KW terms that included the word ‘value’, for example, ‘value chain analysis’ and ‘value chain mapping’. Likewise, all 65 articles associated with Operations Research (OR) were found to have been hit because the word ‘value’ was detected in the context of a specific variable, such as Myerson value, Shapley value or Banzhaf value. Again, none of these OR articles contained a detailed discussion of the nature of value itself. Completion of this exercise produced a distillation of 29 articles on which we agreed as containing the requisite degree of discussion of the conception of value to enable the research objective to be addressed. This consensus was achieved via an iterative process of comparison between team members, and was conducted to triangulate our findings in order to mitigate the inherently subjective nature of the filtering exercise.

3.3 Category selection (Step 3)

These agreed publications formed the focal article set; the establishment of which marked the start of third step of the research design. As indicated in the research methodology, the purpose of this step within the CA method was to estab- lish the analytical categories that were to be applied to the focal material to facilitate its subsequent evaluation. In order to inform the above evaluation and filtering exercise, we had produced a worksheet that detailed all of the author-supplied KWs that consequently formed the major objects of discussion within the population of 261 discrete articles identified by the search strategy. This worksheet had surprisingly yielded a total of 150 distinct KW terms that contained the word ‘value’. These had been invoked a total of 462 times within this wider population set, with ‘value chain’ being the most common of these (42 times).

Based upon this insight, we inductively derived two analytical categories to be used for the subsequent evaluation of the focal article set material. Category-1 was the distinct terms that contained the word ‘value’ within the article title or author-supplied KWs and could hence be expected to form a significant object of discussion within that article. It was

Figure 2. Chronological distribution of articles on value by journal class (1980–2012).

6582 M. Francis et al.

necessary to distinguish between title and KW terms because not all of the articles provided author-supplied KWs. In addition, some title terms had been omitted from these KWs by their authors. Category-2 was established to be the dis- tinct value-related terms contained within that article’s actual body text. This category included the many ancillary and derivative invocations of the term ‘value’ used to explain, support and elaborate upon those terms identified in Cate- gory-1. These invocations were identified by searching all 29 articles for all instances of the word ‘value’, then cata- loguing each distinct term found within a worksheet. A second pass of each article was then conducted to identify all actual definitions of value and value-related terms. These definitions were extracted to a separate worksheet.

3.4 Material evaluation (Step 4)

Having established these two analytical categories, the study entered the last of its four procedural steps. Table 3 sum- marises the citation, source journal class and requisite analytical category details of the agreed focal articles set. These 29 articles are presented in ascending alphabetical citation sequence. As a precursor to the main category evaluation exercise, it is interesting to compare the distribution of this focal article set with the wider population of 261 articles that was described in Steps 2.1 and 2.2. When the focal articles were evaluated by source journal class, 23 (79%) were found to be derived from the Target-ABS journals, whilst a further four (14%) were from Other-ABS journals. Only two (7%) were from Non-ABS listed sources. The focal articles are therefore more highly skewed towards ABS listed journals than the wider population set of articles from which they are drawn. When the focal articles were then analysed by ABS journal ranking, 16 (55%) were found to be from ‘3–4’ rated journals, 9 (31%) were from ‘2’ rated journals and only two (7%) were from ‘1’ rated ABS sources. The focal article set is therefore also more highly skewed towards the higher ABS ranked journals than the wider population. Its journal sources are likewise comparatively more concen- trated, with all articles being drawn from only 12 separate journals as opposed to 47 in the wider population. Only eight of the 18 Target-ABS journals are represented, compared to 15 in the wider population. IJPDLM is again the joint rich- est source, supplying 6 (21%) of the total focal articles. However, within the focal set, it is PPC that shares this joint status, as opposed to IJPR within the wider population.

Turning to analytical Category-1 and the table itemises all of the value-related terms contained within the title and author-supplied KWs. After duplicates were removed, 33 distinct value-related terms were found to be discussed within these 29 articles. As per the wider population set, the most common of these terms was again ‘value chain’, substantiat- ing the claim made during Phase-1 (Fisher et al. 2012) that Porter’s (1985) VCA model is amongst the most influential invocations of the value concept.

The analysis undertaken for Category-2 produced further insight. The last column in Table 3 summarises the total number of distinct value-related terms found within the body text content of each of the focal articles. Again, the sheer number of these was surprising as they amount to a total of 433 (an average of 15 per article). When inter-article dupli- cate terms were eliminated this total reduced to 242 distinct terms (an average of eight per article).

It is notable that this latter total excludes the many derivatives of some of these terms. For example, the single term ‘value added/ing’ was discussed in the context of: ‘ability’, ‘activity’, ‘aspects of supply chain participants’, ‘attributes’, ‘capability’, ‘characteristic’, ‘component’, ‘concept’, ‘content’, ‘flow’, ‘framework’, ‘functions’, ‘material management system’, ‘operation’, ‘performance measurement’, ‘process’, ‘profile’, ‘resources’, ‘role’, ‘service’, ‘solution’, ‘step’ and ‘time’.

Likewise, the variety and breadth of linguistic usages was also striking. These 242 terms encompassed value as a verb (e.g. ‘to add/create/destroy value’ or ‘to value/variety/quality/low cost’); adjective (e.g. ‘emerging/exceptional/fair/ good/high/improved/low/poor’ value); compound noun (e.g. ‘hard/hedonic/green/global/market value’, ‘internal consis- tency value’, ‘cost-to-value ratio’); and proper noun (e.g. ‘Customer Perceived Value Tool’, ‘Customer Value Hierarchy Model’).

During the course of reviewing the content of the focal articles to produce this analysis, it became apparent that the only one of these production-oriented articles to present a comprehensive discussion of the meaning of value was Ramsay (2005). He surveys usages of this term in the disciplines of economics, marketing, strategy and operations in order to provide clarity ‘to the real meaning’ of the term specifically within the context of trading relationships. His paper has the applied goal of providing management with a motivational tool for enhancing company performance, as distinct from presenting itself as a theoretical meta-analysis of the type found within the marketing literature during Phase-1 of this study (see Holbrook 1994; Wilson and Jantrania 1994; Payne and Holt 1999; Lindgreen and Wynstra 2005; Lindgreen et al. 2012). The remaining focal articles discuss the conception of value to varying degrees.

This leads us to a final observation, which concerns definitional rigour. The definitions that had earlier been extracted to their separate worksheet were now compared to the terms captured for the Category-1 and Category-2 analysis. Of the 242 distinct value-related terms encompassed in Table 3, only 28 (12%) were found to be defined

International Journal of Production Research 6583

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6584 M. Francis et al.

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6

International Journal of Production Research 6585

within the constituent article set. When these 29 articles were further scrutinised, 10 were found to contain no definition at all. Of the remaining 19, only eight provided a definition of one of the significant value-related terms that had formed the basis for the Category-1 analysis (i.e. contained within its article title or author-supplied KW). More worryingly, only seven of these 19 articles contained a definition of the underlying ‘value’ that was embodied in the wider value- related terms that they purported to discuss, and none of these articles were one of the previous eight mentioned above.

Space constraints prevent the detailing of all these definitions. However, it is instructive to briefly review a represen- tative sample of them to illustrate their variety of interpretations. For example, Ramsay (2005, 552) cites Gale (1994, 26) who defines value ‘… [as] simply quality, however the customer defines it, offered at the right price’. Citing Newman (1992), Poon and Lau (2000, 151) point out that ‘… the American Society for Quality defines value as the ratio of quality to price’. Ramsay also recounts Porter’s (1985, 38) definition of value, which is simply ‘… the amount buyers are willing to pay for what a firm provides them. Value is measured by total revenue …’. The notion of value as a ratio is adopted by Ketchen, Hult, and Tomas (2007, 576) who state that ‘[customer value is created] by either reduc- ing costs or increasing the benefits (i.e. value = benefits/costs)’. Poon and Lau (2000, 151) suggest that ‘Value can be used to describe an abstraction or perception of the degree of importance of an object to one’s need or the cost associ- ated with the object in question’. Smith, Ng, and Maul (2012, 555) likewise emphasise the role of perception and cite Woodruff (1997, 142) who defines value as ‘… a customer’s perceived preference for and evaluation of those product attributes, attribute performances, and consequences arising from use that facilitate (or block) achieving the customer’s goals and purposes in use situations’.

4. Conclusions, implications and future research

This paper sought to characterise the current conception of value within the production-oriented disciplines of purchas- ing and supply, logistics and OM. Our findings provide a number of insights that make a significant contribution to knowledge, and they also raise some interesting questions for future research.

Our research characterised the significant growth in academic interest on the subject of value over the last three dec- ades as evidenced by the number and distribution of journal articles on this topic. Likewise, it established that the con- cept of value is undoubtedly a cornerstone of the contemporary production system and supply chain constructs, but that this concept suffers from a pronounced interpretive viability issue within the academic literature, just as we found within the practitioner literature evaluated during Phase-1 of our programme of research (Fisher et al. 2012). We identified four factors that contribute to this issue:

Firstly is the general lack of theoretical rigour; we were unable to identify a single theoretical meta-analysis on the subject of value of the type identified within the marketing literature and reported upon during our previous phase of research (Fisher et al. 2012). Secondly is the lack of definitional rigour. Overt definition of the underlying meaning of value was found to be rare. Triangulating the findings from the practitioner literature evaluated during Phase-1 (Fisher et al. 2012), the production-oriented journal articles likewise tend to treat the nature of value as axiomatic, else adopt a teleological approach by substituting definition with reference to established disciplinary ‘value adding practices’ or traits. This compounds the third factor, which can only be described as the plethora of different value-related terms found to be in circulation within this literature. We are reminded that the 29 journal papers that formed the focal article set yielded 33 distinct author-supplied value-related KW terms; a total that increased to 242 distinct terms when the body text of these articles were analysed. This is separate from the 150 value-related KW terms provided by the authors of the 261 articles that constituted the wider population set, which for reasons of practicality were not analysed to identify the additional value-related terms contained within their body text. The fourth and final factor was the variety of linguistic usages embodied in these terms. Within these, value was used as a verb, adjective and noun. It seems that the term ‘value’ is as ubiquitous as the ‘f-word’!

At the outset of this paper, we cited Van de Ven’s (1992) argument that the interpretation of a term adopted by a researcher influences the research questions asked, methods employed and consequently the contribution that is made to theory. Our findings emphasise the very high degree of interpretive viability that exists concerning the concept of value within the field of production. This has profound implications for academics and researchers within this field. It raises the question of how it is possible to study something effectively when it is so inadequately defined? However, most sig- nificantly we earlier established that the concept of ‘value’ and ‘value adding’ is of fundamental importance to the notion of the production system and supply chain, which in turn are both fundamental constructs within this field. Therefore, by logical extension, our findings throw into question the theoretical underpinning of much of the extant research within the field.

Our findings also have significant implications for practitioners in this field. For example, how is it possible to reward employees for their contribution to maximising customer value and hence organisational performance if we don’t

6586 M. Francis et al.

know what value is? Also, how is it possible to design an effective or efficient production system or supply chain based upon the value principle if none of the actors have a common understanding, let alone consensus, of what value amounts to?

There is clearly a need for greater clarity on this issue. What can be the essence that is common to all the invoca- tions of value that we identified during our study? Indeed, is there such an essence, which is clearly the unarticulated assumption of all the publications that we analysed during both phases of our programme of research? Is it really possi- ble that a single, coherent conception of value can apply to all of these invocations and provide an effective principle for production system and supply chain design and improvement? Should we think the unthinkable: is value a meaning- less concept that is nothing more than a flaccid and ‘valueless’ adjective that should be dropped from the management lexicon and perhaps simply be replaced by the word ‘money’, ‘cash’ or ‘profit’?

Our planned future research will attempt to address this issue and answer the questions raised above. In order to achieve this goal, our first step will be to better understand how value is conceived within the COMPs that have come to define our current conception of the production system and supply chain, and consequently to help illuminate their theoretical underpinnings. This exercise will encompass the most influential of these COMPs such as Lean, TQM, Six Sigma and the Agile paradigm. We plan to then use this insight to help eliminate the interpretive viability issue on the subject of value within this field and hence ensure that the various actors in our production systems and supply chains are indeed ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’.

Note 1. The two 3* journals that are not hosted by BSP or EMX are Reliability Engineering and System Safety and the Journal of

Scheduling.

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