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Espoused values of organisations.

Article Excerpt
Abstract:

We review a series of studies whose focus is the measurement and comparison of values espoused by organisations in their public documents, in particular their annual reports. We begin by considering the construct of organizational values and the advantages and assumptions involved in using content-analysis of organizational documents to measure espoused values. Three interrelated studies of espoused organisational values are then described. The first of these investigates the value profiles of a sample of large Australian companies in order to test the validity of a previously developed typology of organisational values derived from distributive and procedural justice theory (Kabanoff 1990. Changes in organisational values over time for the same group of companies are then considered. This study illustrates that how one studies value change, either in a univariate way by comparing single values over time or by comparing the incidence of different organisational `types' that is organisational with different types of value profiles, significantly influences the results and interpretations of changes over time. The final study is a cross-national comparison involving Australian and US organisations that reveals several meaningful differences between the countries in the incidence of organisations with different value profiles. We conclude with a brief discussion of future planned research using the same methodology and focusing on the role of espoused values in organisational mergers and acquisitions.

Keywords:

ORGANISATIONAL VALUES: CROSS-NATIONAL COMPARISON; ESPOUSED VALUES; CONTENT ANALYSIS; VALUES TYPOLOGY; CHANGE.

1. Introduction

Over the last 20 years or so, interest in values has expanded beyond the individual level of analysis to include the collective, organisational level (cf Maierhofer, Kabanoff & Griffin, in press). As Rokeach (1979), one of the fathers of values research noted, a powerful aspect of the values concept is that it can be equally usefully applied to study individuals, groups, organisations, institutions, countries and societies. Each of these entities can be thought of as possessing `generalised, enduring beliefs about the desirability of certain models of conducts or end states of existence', that is, values. We report here on an ongoing program of research that has focussed on the broad questions of whether there are a relatively small number of value patterns or value structures that characterise most organisations. The research program we describe draws upon a new theory of organisational values and a novel methodology--the content analysis of organisational documents in order to identify `traces' of values espoused in such documents.

2. Defining Organisation Values

There are some conceptual `loose ends' that we need to consider when our subject is organisational values. Some might suggest that to imbue organisations with values is to anthropomorphise them, for surely no matter what entity we study, be it individuals' or countries' values, ultimately it is the value `expressions' of people that we rely upon to study values. Nevertheless it is possible and meaningful to distinguish between the values people personally hold and those that they express or espouse on behalf of a collective such as an organisation. We use the term espoused values here to clarify the distinction between what we have studied and what some others define as organisational values (e.g. Rousseau 1990), namely values that are shared by all or a large proportion of an organisation's members, or values as a proxy for organisational practices (Trice & Beyer 1993). Argyris and Schon (1978) draw the distinction between espoused and enacted values and it will become clear as we proceed that our concern is with values that are more towards the espoused end of their dimension. However, to call them espoused values does not imply we view them as ephemeral or unimportant. Values that organisations espouse, or more accurately are espoused on their behalf by senior managers can, in some cases at least, reflect organisational practices, and in most or all cases, they reflect what senior managers actually believe their organisations to be like, what they would like or prefer their organisations to be like, or what they would like significant stakeholders to believe the organisation is like. We hope that by measuring and exploring espoused values we can come to a better understanding of the different roles and functions of such espoused values.

3. A Content Analysis Approach to Describing Espoused Values Given that values are important how can we describe them and measure them if we wish to make quantitative comparisons? Broadly speaking, studies of organisational values have taken one of two forms---qualitative case studies involving one or a few organisations (e.g. Schein 1985) and quantitative, survey-based studies involving, in a few cases, relatively large numbers of organisations (e.g. Chatman & Jehn 1994). When confronted with the problem of trying to characterise the values of relatively large numbers of organisations, the intensive case-study does not seem well suited, and the survey, while more suited, is extremely resource intensive and in a number of ways quite limited. For example, to arrive at an organisation's values do we simply average what all of an organisation's members say, or are people with more senior positions more likely to provide a useful description? To overcome some of the limitations of both traditional qualitative and quantitative methods, we have used an infrequently utilised methodology--content or text analysis (see Kabanoff 1996 for a more detailed description of the methodology).

Language, it has been argued, mirrors mental processes and reflects people's differing cognitions and realities (e.g. Huff 1990). Content or text analysis (CA) depends on this key assumption. It has been defined as `any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages' (Stone, Dunphy, Smith & Ogilvie 1966)....

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