The benefits of participatory value evaluation in a company environment

Abstract

This thesis explores how the benefits and drawbacks found in previous government-citizen use cases of Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) translate to a company environment PVE use case. This research is conducted at and with the help of Liander. Liander is one of three energy distribution system operators in the Netherlands. The following research question is answered: “To what extend do the benefits of PVEs that are deployed in citizen to government context apply to the use of PVE within a company environment?”. This is done by doing exploratory research within Liander and conducting a PVE survey for their asset management department about the architectural life cycle of a compact secondary substation. Previous use cases are explored to identify the benefits and drawbacks of PVE. Agency theory is used to make a comparison between the government-citizen environment and the company environment. This comparison and the principal-agent relation is used to make predictions on the results of the survey to see if the survey produces valid data. Two of the four benefits found in previous cases translated to a company environment and the drawback translates to a lesser extent. The PVE survey used in this thesis became more complex and much more on an operational level compared to previous PVE surveys. This resulted in a smaller group of relevant participants, which directly impacted the benefits. Employees see potential to use PVE in different ways that would benefit efficiency or the flow of information. These implementations vary a lot, but for all of them the current PVE tooling is unsuitable. PVE tooling could be adapted to suit this new type of use and to increase the ease of use for companies. Further research on the exact adaptations of the PVE tooling would be needed to implement this. Future research on the use of PVE in a business environment could focus on more strategic subjects. As an example, general strategic direction could be the subject of the PVE between a company board and the company shareholders. These subjects would more closely match previous PVE cases and would help provide context for the results of this thesis.