We hear and read about the call to talk about values again and again – and not only during periods of crisis. The topics are the necessity for or the pressure of changing values, the values of a leading culture, and a debate on values. Values are equated with moral and ethical principles, rather than creative values or the capital value of goods. However, how does the development of values work in our society? Which things or people are regarded as valuable or worthless? Moreover, how does another type of valuation lead us to more valuable management, i.e. a more appreciative life?
This is the topic of this issue of the factory magazine: Value-ation (28,8 MB). After Be(a)ware and Trans-form, our third hyphenated title ‘Value-ation‘ sets the whole range of appreciation of tangible, personal and social values in the context of sustainable economy. With this in mind, we first take a look at economic terms like exchange and market value in Value and Values, then we will be Learning to learn the Value of Goods through a critique of economic growth, and we point out ‘Creatures with High Value’ in a photo report. We find out that exchange values are based on something that is More Valuable than Money and has to do with social appreciation as well, just like business ethics in ‘Appreciation – More of That!’ and the strengthening of one's self-esteem through ‘The Art of Appreciating Oneself’. Our report on ‘Cash for High Value’ shows that moral concepts may change in some situations and that we are grateful for appreciation.
As always, we have included useful valuable figures and insightful quotations and we hope that this issue of the factory magazine will encourage another type of ‘Value-ation’ and more appreciative management. The magazine Value-ation with all articles, full of illustrations, wordcloud, facts, numbers and citations is free available for download – optimized to read on screen or on tablets. There are only a few articles in the topics-area Value-ation online, but with expressive links and the possibility to comment.
We are once again grateful for the help and support of Dr. Donald Kiraly and his students of the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz who are translating every issue.
Note: The PDF is of very large size (28,8 MB) due to photo story which is shot in black and white with an analog big size camera. These pictures we cannot reduce further without loss of clarity on high resolution screens.
Ralf Bindel and the editorial team
(Translated from the German by Lars Zankl, Christine Gubo and Bianca Gerards)