Social representations of value : an empirical investigation

The importance of value and value creation for the success of business activity has been increasingly recognised theoretically and practically. The concept of value has been defined on the basis of various foundations and from different perspectives. Despite the extant conceptualisations of value in business literature, social representations of value (i.e. common sense knowledge about value) are yet to be fully understood. Thus, this paper investigated these social representations as well as the relationship between extant representations of value by employing the structural social representation theory and its related methodology strategy as proposed by Doise et al (1993), as well as the ontology engineering method (Ma, et al, 2014). The analysis revealed that economy-based concepts constitute the core elements of value representation in the overall value network, while exchange- and experience- based concepts form the sub-networks (clusters) for value. Exchange-centricity, with economy-based concepts as its foundation, is the dominant representation of value, while experience-centred concepts constitute the peripheral elements in the overall network of value. Despite the different positions of these sub-networks (clusters) of value in the value network, they share common core elements, i.e. economy-related concepts. It can be suggested that creating worth for firms is still the dominant representation of value that is shared in the public sphere and well-documented in business literature. In terms of the extant representations of value in business literature, the exchange-based notion of value (Goods-Dominant Logic) is more representative than the experienced-based notion of value (Service-Dominant Logic) for its common understanding in the public sphere. Service-Dominant Logic as proposed in the business community is an accepted concept, although still from a peripheral position. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed