A movement to integrate value throughout all aspects of business decisions is revolutionizing corporate culture.

A.W. "Bill" Dahlberg, BBA 1970, has spent more than 40 years working in the power and energy industry, including six as chair and CEO of the Southern Company and currently as the chairman of Mirant. In those 40 years, he's seen many business trends come and go, stocks rise and fall, the energy field deregulate and the Southern Company transform from a regional electric company to a successful global energy powerhouse. But "in truth," Dahlberg said, "I've seen only one major change, and that is more and more emphasis on making the numbers each month."

The drive by investors to support only companies that make those numbers is "a case of Wall Street looking for a penny instead of a nickel, seeking the short-term and not the long-term," Dahlberg said. "Investors' expectations are important; after all, they are the owners, But we as managers need to make sure we build a company that provides long-term value."

Teaching companies how to achieve that value is the goal of a new book, Driving Shareholder Value, co-written by Roger A. Morin, professor of finance in the Robinson College of Business. Morin believes pressure is mounting on businesses to integrate value-based strategies throughout their organizations. For one, scrutiny by investors is at an all-time high, ''Wall Street investors are interventionists. If a company is not performing, they will dump its stock," Morin said. "Investor groups such as CalPERS publicize such companies in a regular 'hit list: and The Wall Street Journal publishes an annual shareholders' scorecard for the world to judge the state of a business."

Accompanying this increased scrutiny by investors, the recent corporate climate has witnessed an unprecedented wave of takeovers, mergers, divestitures and corporate restructurings. Although leveraged buyouts are often less dramatic than the famous 1989 $25 billion takeover of RJR Nabisco, this activity is increasing ccording to Morin.

Globalization, too, is playing its part in changing the environment of corporate culture. Whereas five years ago, two out of 10 companies in the United States had foreign competitors, now that number has risen to six. Deregulation, diversification by domestic companies and multinational expansion by overseas companies have lowered many barriers that once protected an industry's profits. Now, any company "without a global reach will soon be at a disadvantage:' Morin wrote in Driving Shareholder Value. "The impact of globalization is pervasive, affecting the flows of goods and services, financial capital (e.g., the power of Japan and Europe) and information and knowledge in all industries. The result is a virtual real-time world marketplace."

The pressures don't end there. Companies must compete with rival businesses not only for investors' savings but also for the skilled senior executives needed to oversee rapidly changing transformations in the information age.

Rather than leading to an implosion, these pressures are forcing companies to integrate value-enhancing approaches throughout all their activities, Morin said, in essence creating a renaissance in the way business goes about its work "Pressure fosters creativity forcing businesses to reexamine how their processes affect their shareholders. There has always been a need to instill value throughout companies, but now the markets are so Darwinian that we have to develop a framework to respond," he said.

Morin presents that framework in Driving Shareholder Value, co-written with Sherry L. Jarrell, an assistant professor at Wake Forest University's Babcock Graduate School of Management. The book is a how-to manual for companies to design and implement a value-based approach. Its stated purpose is to "help managers make connections between strategy, financing, corporate governance and creation of shareholder wealth." Its method is to translate proven theories about creating corporate value into practical tools and approaches using case studies and empirical data.

"Many companies now extol the virtues of maximizing shareholder value in their mission statements, annual reports and investor communications but fail to fully exploit potential wealth creation from a value-based perspective," wrote the authors. Driving Shareholder Value wants to make certain the value potential is reached.