PRINCIPLES for ON BALANCE VALUE

On Balance Value is a guide to understanding, decision, and action: what stakeholder pressures to engage; what objectives to pursue; what outcomes to expect; what links to create; what targets to set; how to measure progress; and how to report.

As a model, it is based upon the following principles:

Every organization is a system, and the adaptive capacity of any system depends upon its ability to embrace the complexity of broader systems.
As a system, every organization has relationships, or stakeholders, which present the organization with pressures that differ in kind and degree.
Each stakeholder in a system is a mutual relationship: that is, each stakeholder holds shared interest(s), and all stakeholders are stakeholders of all other stakeholders.
The relationships an organization has with its stakeholders are dynamic; their relative importance will differ from time to time, but none is more inherently important than another.
Dialogue is an essential element of engaging stakeholder pressures.
No organization can be all things to all stakeholders, but it must recognize the pressures they present, prioritize among them, and manage tradeoffs.
A strategic role of management is to prioritize stakeholder pressures and take the first step toward engaging them by reducing them to concrete multidimensional outcomes.
Each multidimensional outcome will involve, affect, or be of interest to multiple stakeholders, but to differing degrees.
Relationship management is an essential management discipline to realize On Balance Value.
In the final analysis, management must achieve alignment or 'fit' between its chosen objectives and the strategy, budget, technology, structure, culture, and management style chosen to achieve them. In short, it must be a responsible business enterprise.