Research Question: Can organizations truly create value for all its stakeholders simultaneously, without a significant trade-off from one group to another? And what role does current ICT infrastructure play?

Purpose: This study is aimed at determining how organizations create value simultaneously for stakeholders without a trade-off, and also examine the role of ICT (Information and communication technologies) in balancing responsibility in trying to satisfying all stakeholders (customers, suppliers, society, environment, employees and shareholders) in complex ICT environments.

Methodology: The study involves business organizations in Sweden. A research questionnaire was sent to one thousand five hundred top level management executives in Swedish based business organizations, to collect data.  Business organizations were carefully selected to cut across many industry sectors.

Findings: Some of the findings includes: that many companies in Sweden still have a hard time satisfying all stakeholders simultaneously without trade-off, even with the huge ICT infrastructures. We discovered that although companies invest a lot on ICT, but the combination of strategy which will bring corporate partnership and create value for all without “robbing Peter to pay Paul” is still lacking.

Research Limitations: First, the study was limited to Sweden because of lack of resources to conduct interviews in many countries. Thus, there is the need to exercise caution in generalising these findings. Second, the number of respondents was limited, because it was difficult to get very busy top management executives from different companies to respond to our questionnaire.  

Originality: This research work provides insight to understand and interpret balanced stakeholder value creation in companies, identify attributes for simultaneous value creation, as well as the role information and communication technology play in achieving this objective.

Keywords: Stakeholder, Value Creation, Information and communication technology, Sustainable Value, and Stakeholder Analysis