Michael Cholbi has a post entitled Consequentialism and ‘the value of the action itself’ at Pea Soup. Here is a taste:
A question for those better tutored in (or perhaps more sympathetic to) consequentialism than I: How are we to understand the claim that consequentialists count the "value of the action itself" as part of the value of an outcome? I’ve encountered this claim numerous times, but I confess I don’t understand how to square an action’s having value in itself with the consequentialist thesis that only the results or consequences of an action determine its deontic status.