Putting Values into Context

How Do Values Affect Behavior? Let Me Count the Ways

“…In sum, value instantiations serve as a powerful moderator of the relationships between values and behavior. They may account for some of the variance in the magnitude of these relationships, documented across studies (e.g., Maio et al, 2020;Smith, 2020). Hanel and his colleagues pointed to the societal culture as an important factor that affects the instantiations of values.…”

Challenges and Gaps in Studying Value–Behavior Associations in Work Settings

“…The three commentaries vary in their content, each raising intriguing ideas and suggestions for further integration of the literature and for future research. At the same time, they all point to the need to better account for the substantial differences in the magnitude of the value–behavior relationships, and for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that underlie these relationships, and that determine their causality (Fischer, ; Maio, Hanel, Martin, Lee, & Thomas, ; Smith, ). We agree that these are the main challenges in understanding the impact of values in work settings and of the potential role that values may play in organizational interventions.…”

The Value of Values for Understanding Organizational Life: Editor’s Introduction to the Lead Article

“…They are published together with commentaries by other leading researchers and followed by a response from the lead article authors. The lead article by Arieli, Sagiv, and Roccas (2019) provides a valuable overview of research on personal values in organizations, while the comentaries by Fischer (), Maio, Hanel, Martin, Lee, and Thomas () and Smith () offer insightful reflections for future research.…”

“…The commentaries point to context as a boundary condition shaping the strength of value–behavior relationships. Smith () highlights research on cultural tightness‐looseness (Gelfand et al, ) and that values show stronger relationships with behavior in looser cultures where individuals are free to express their values in behavior as opposed to tighter cultures where behavior tends to follow social norms. Fischer () makes similar points and additionally considers moderating effects of socio‐economic and resource constraints, which have similar effects to those of tight cultures.…”

“…The commentaries highlight the relative lack of theory and our limited understanding of the mechanisms involved that connect values and organizational behaviors and point to several challenges in this regard. Firstly, the same values might be associated with very different behaviors in different contexts (Maio et al, ; Smith, ), in other words value instantiations differ across countries (Hanel et al, ) and potentially across different organizations. For example, the behaviors that are considered to reflect equal opportunity and the types of groups deserving access to equal opportunities differ across countries (Maio et al, ).…”