A new approach to customer value improvement through co-leadership, trust and methodology for increased organisational return on investment

In an era where economic turbulence is constant with many organisations rightsizing to remain competitive, customer value improvement (CVI) is central to organisational strategy. As a panacea for this customer value improvement or continuous improvement challenge, many excellence frameworks and improvement methodologies have guided organisations to performance improvement since the 1980s. Despite their popularity, numerous authors have reported inadequacies and have made calls for improvement. Consequently, the research aim for this study was to review customer value improvement with a view to developing and validating a new customer value improvement (CVI) framework and to provide deeper knowledge and understanding of customer value improvement for increased organisational return on investment ROI. As part of the first strand of the literature review, a review of the effectiveness of the MBNQA Award and the EFQM Excellence Model was carried out. The second strand reviewed the effectiveness of Six Sigma. The third strand of the research reviewed the role of strategic quality and customer value. Combining these three research strands enabled the researcher to distil the key concepts for customer value improvement. In order to address the research aim, a mixed methodology approach of survey and in-depth interview was used to answer the following questions: Q1. What are the key components of customer value improvement in organisations for increased ROI? Q2. How are these components of customer value improvement connected inside a customer value improvement framework? Q3. What knowledge is required by leaders and improvement specialists for effective adoption of organisational customer value improvement for increased ROI? This doctoral study has made a significant contribution to the theory and practice of customer value improvement research. First, this study has developed and validated a new framework. Second, this study has provided deeper knowledge and understanding for organisational leaders and improvement specialists through work undertaken for three peer reviewed journals. Third, this study has validated (Conti 2011) assertions concerning the inadequecies of the existing excellence frameworks. Fourth, this study has extended the work of Maier (1955) on people performance models by validating a more comprehensive performance model. Finally, the empirical study demonstrates that this new validated CVI framework has practical application in all organisations looking to increase the ROI through customer value improvement.