Values Enactment in Organizations: A Multi-Level Examination

Abstract

Business writers and practitioners recommend that core organizational values be integrated into employee work life for enhanced organizational productivity, yet no published studies have empirically examined the antecedents and outcomes of values enactment. Using longitudinal data on 2,622 employees, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results revealed that tenure and department-level values enactment were significant predictors of individual values enactment. Furthermore, employees who demonstrated high levels of values enactment were less likely to leave, and employees of high or low levels of values enactment in departments whose levels of values enactment matched their own were the most likely to be promoted.

A (Blurry) Vision of the Future: How Leader Rhetoric about Ultimate Goals Influences Performance

“…Rather, they serve as general standards for guiding conduct during task work (Gruys, Stewart, Goodstein, Bing, & Wicks, 2008). When multiple individuals have the same understanding of how to act during the implementation phase of a task, the link between a shared ultimate goal and coordination will be boosted.…”

An Unexpected Means of Embedding Ethics in Organizations: Preliminary Findings from Values-Based Evaluations

“…Gruys et al [70] (p. 833) lament that "too often the values of organizations show up on laminated cards or wall plaques, rarely heard or seen", while Lencioni's [71] (p. 113) damning verdict on corporate values statements is that the majority are "bland, toothless or just plain dishonest", with resulting destructive impacts on employee morale, client satisfaction and managerial credibility. Values transmitted implicitly through other channels such as rituals, drama, stories and symbolic constructions within an organization's culture may contradict those that are explicitly communicated in oral or written forms [72].…”

“…Existing literature hints at possible ways to do this: Gruys et al [70] suggest, for example, that a potential solution might be to obtain a measure of organizational values enactment by linking statements of espoused values directly to formal performance assessment systems. That measurement-based approach contrasts with Cha and Edmondson's more constructionist recommendation [73] (p. 75) of "thoughtful dialogue" between managers and employees about the meanings and practical implications of value-labels.…”

Bringing the “Missing Pillar” into Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Intersubjective Values-Based Indicators

“…We can't answer that question: we can't measure compassion in any objective sense, because compassion doesn't exist in the sense that those things I just described exist.‖ [72][73][74]. This point is similarly illustrated by literature in management and organization studies, where differences in the ways in which value-labels are understood by managers and employees can contribute to significant problems within organizations-even leading directly, in one case, to the resignation of a senior executive [65,75,76]. We therefore conclude that Premise 1 is true and that values enactment cannot be objectively defined.…”

“…In this paper, we follow Gruys et al [65] in using the term -values espousal‖ to refer to the use of values-related vocabulary in spoken, written and/or multimedia discourses, and -values enactment‖ to describe situations in which values are -lived out or enacted [by individuals] through their specific actions and behaviours [sic]‖-drawing on the earlier work of Argyris and Schön [66]. This formulation of -values enactment‖ and -values espousal‖ is derived from research in social psychology, but has parallels with work carried out in other disciplines, such as sociology-notably Bernard Lahire's [67] duality of -dispositions to act‖ and -dispositions to believe‖, which in turn draws on the work of Bourdieu [68].…”