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Value first, cost later: Total value contribution as a new approach to sourcing decisions
Author(s) -
Gray John V.,
Helper Susan,
Osborn Beverly
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of operations management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.649
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1873-1317
pISSN - 0272-6963
DOI - 10.1002/joom.1113
Subject(s) - revenue , incentive , value (mathematics) , stakeholder , business , total cost of ownership , strategic sourcing , marketing , value capture , operations management , economics , industrial organization , computer science , value creation , microeconomics , strategic planning , management , finance , strategic financial management , accounting , machine learning
Firms compete on value, not cost alone. However, sourcing decisions are often heavily weighted towards minimizing costs, even though these decisions also can affect revenue, risk, and other stakeholder values. To address this disconnect, we introduce a new approach to strategic sourcing, “total value contribution” (TVC). The TVC name by itself promotes attention to value. TVC's structured approach begins with the question: “what do our customers, current and future, value about our products?” The TVC approach builds on insights from the literature on individual and group decision‐making to offset human biases and organizational incentives that emphasize cost reduction. TVC builds on gains already achieved by “total cost of ownership” (TCO) sourcing methods, which broadened the list of factors considered in sourcing. We provide examples of TVC‐like thinking in real organizations and argue that such thinking would be more common with the dissemination of TVC. We also provide access to a version of this JOM Forum piece suitable to assign to students, and discuss a new teaching note which describes how to implement TVC in a popular strategic sourcing teaching case. We believe widespread implementation of TVC would improve both organizational and social outcomes.