Opening Case

Case no 1

Most of the westerners consume beef which is personally and socially preferable by them. Indians particularly Hindus do not consume beef as the basic conviction is that cows are God and they give milk. The basic conviction is personally and socially preferable to Hindus. In other words, it is the value of Hindus of not consuming beef and treating the cow as a sacred animal.

Case No 2

One of the food processing companies defends its action of using apple essence rather than actual apple in its products as the action results in less cost and competitive advantage. This company says: “earning profit by any means is our value.” This company believes that the end state of earning profit for existence is its value. These two examples give you a general idea of what value is?

Meaning

Values are collection of guiding principles; what an individual considers to be morally right and desirable in life, especially regarding personal conduct.

Personal values are people's internal conception of what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc.

Values such as honesty, hard work, and discipline can increase an employee's efficacy in the workplace and help them serve as a positive role model to others. Employees should not impose their own values on their co-workers.

Management must take values into consideration when hiring to ensure that employee values align with the company's, as well as those of other co-workers.

Generally, value has been taken to mean moral ideas, general conceptions or orientations towards the world or sometimes simply interests, attitudes, preferences, needs, sentiments and dispositions. But sociologists use this term in a more precise sense to mean “the generalized end which has the connotations of rightness, goodness or inherent desirability”.

These ends are regarded legitimate and binding by society. They define what is important worthwhile and worth striving for. Sometimes, values have been interpreted to mean “such standards by means of which the ends of action are selected”. Thus, values are collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper or bad, undesirable, and improper in a culture.

According to M. Haralambos (2000), “a value is a belief that something is good and desirable”. For R.K. Mukerjee (1949) (a pioneer Indian sociologist who initiated the study of social values), “values are socially approved desires and goals that are internalised through the process of conditioning, learning or socialisation and that become subjective preferences, standards and aspirations”. A value is a shared idea about how something is ranked in terms of desirability, worth or goodness.

Familiar examples of values are wealth, loyalty, independence, equality, justice, fraternity and friend­liness. These are generalised ends consciously pursued by or held up to individuals as being worthwhile in themselves. It is not easy to clarify the fundamental values of a given society because of their sheer breadth.

Definition

According to Milton Rokeach, a noted psychologist “Values are global beliefs that guide actions and judgments across a variety of situations”

Values represent basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct (or end state of existence) is personally or socially preferable to an opposite mode of conduct (or end state of existence)”.

In other words, Rokeach believed that

• We have values for ourselves and values for society. These values may be the same or they may differ. For example, you may believe that you should be forgiving of others, but that society should be less concerned with being forgiving.

• 'Enduring beliefs' means that values are generally stable, although they can change as people continue to make decisions that involve putting one value ahead of another.

• There is a difference between values that are modes of conduct and values that are end-states of existence. Values that are modes of conduct are referred to as instrumental values. Values that are end-states of existence are terminal values.

How Are Values Formed?

Values are usually shaped by many different internal and external influences, including family, traditions, culture, and, more recently, media and the Internet. A person will filter all of these influences and meld them into a unique value set that may differ from the value sets of others in the same culture.

Values are thought to develop in various stages during a person's upbringing, and they remain relatively consistent as children mature into adults. Sociologist Morris Massey outlines three critical development periods for an individual's value system:

• Imprint period (birth to age seven): Individuals begin establishing the template for what will become their own values.

• Modeling period (ages eight to thirteen): The individual's value template is sculpted and shaped by parents, teachers, and other people and experiences in the person's life.

• Socialization period (ages thirteen to twenty-one): An individual fine-tunes values through personal exploration and comparing and contrasting with other people's behavior.

Values in the Workplace

Personal values can be influenced by culture, tradition, and a combination of internal and external factors. Values determine what individuals find important in their daily life and help to shape their behavior in each situation they encounter. Since values often strongly influence both attitude and behavior, they serve as a kind of personal compass for employee conduct in the workplace. Values help determine whether an employee is passionate about work and the workplace, which in turn can lead to above-average returns, high employee satisfaction, strong team dynamics, and synergy.

Values can strongly influence employee conduct in the workplace. If an employee values honesty, hard work, and discipline, for example, he will likely make an effort to exhibit those traits in the workplace. This person may therefore be a more efficient employee and a more positive role model to others than an employee with opposite values.

Conflict may arise, however, if an employee realizes that his co-workers do not share her values. For example, an employee who values hard work may resent co-workers who are lazy or unproductive without being reprimanded. Even so, additional conflicts can result if the employee attempts to force his own values on his co-workers.

Hiring for Values

  If the managers of a business create a mission statement, they have likely decided what values they want their company to project to the public. The mission statement can help them seek out candidates whose personalities match these values, which can help reduce friction in the workplace and foster a positive work environment.

  Skills-based hiring is important for efficiency and is relatively intuitive. However, hiring for values is at least as important. Because individual values have such strong attitudinal and behavioral effects, a company must hire teams of individuals whose values do not conflict with either each other's or those of the organization.

Merging personal and organizational values

The discussion on values till now is focused on personal values. An individual enters an organization with a personal value system – a relatively permanent framework of beliefs that influences the general nature of his or her behavior. Individuals enter the organization with their own value systems, which often clash and together may conflict with organizational values.

What values a manager carries to the organization are called intended values. These are ideals that are personally important. However, to be successful in an organization, managers need to learn adopted values, a set of values that are part of the organization’s culture. When personal values (intended) and organizational values (adopted) are congruent, these become highly pragmatic operative values. Thus, they provide a frame of reference for consistency in making decisions and relationships with others. Organizations grow and prosper when operative values are strong.

Characteristics Of Values

1. Values provide standards of competence and morality.

2. Values are fewer in number than attitudes.

3. Values transcend specific objects, situations or persons.

4. Values are relatively permanent and resistant to change.

5. Values are most central to the core of a person.

6. Values have two attributes-content and intensity. The content attribute stresses that a particular code of conduct is important. The intensity attribute specifies how important that particulars code of conduct is.

7. When we rank an individual’s values in terms of their intensity. We obtain the value system of that person.

8. In the value system, all of us have a hierarchy of values; which is identified by the relative importance we assign to different values such as freedom, self respect, honesty, self respect, and so on.

Importance of values

1. Values lay the foundations for the understanding of attitudes and motivation.

2. Personal value system influences the perception of individuals.

3. Value system influences the manager’s perception of the different situations.

4. Personal value system influences the way in which a manager views the other individuals and the groups of individuals in the organisation.

5. Value system also influences a manager’s decisions and his solutions to the various problems.

6. Values influence the attitudes and behaviours. An individual will get more job satisfaction if his values align with the organisation’s policies. If the organisation’s policies are different from his views and values, he will be disappointed; the disappointment will lead to job dissatisfaction and decline in performance.

7. The challenge and reexamination of established work values constitute important corner stone’s of the current management revolution all over the world. Hence, an understanding of the values becomes a necessity.

The main functions of values are as follows

1. Values play an important role in the integration and fulfillment of man’s basic impulses and desires in a stable and consistent manner appropriate for his living.

2. They are generic experiences in social action made up of both individual and social responses and attitudes.

3. They build up societies, integrate social relations.

4. They mould the ideal dimensions of personality and range and depth of culture.

5. They influence people’s behavior and serve as criteria for evaluating the actions of others.

6. They have a great role to play in the conduct of social life.

7. They help in creating norms to guide day-to-day behaviour.

Types of values

1. Instrumental values

Instrumental Values are core values, permanent in nature, comprise personal characteristics and character traits.

Instrumental Values refer to preferable modes of behavior and include values like honesty, sincerity, ambition, independence, obedience, imaginativeness, courageousness, competitiveness, and also some negative traits too. 

Organizations also have Instrumental Values (which can be ascertained from the organizational culture) and these are permanent in nature and difficult to change. 

For example, the instrumental values of a PSU will differ from that of an MNC though both may be in the same business.

2. Terminal values

In our personal lives, Terminal Values are those things that we can work towards or we think are most important and we feel are most desirable – terminal values are desirable states of existence. 

Terminal Values include things like happiness, self respect, family security, recognition, freedom, inner harmony, comfortable life, professional excellence, etc

In a nutshell, Terminal Values signify the objectives of the life of a person – the ultimate things the person wants to achieve through his or her behavior (the destination he wants to reach in life) whereas Instrumental Values indicate the methods an individual would like to adopt for achieving his life’s aim (the path he would like to take to reach his destination).

This applies to organizations as well, and organizations too exhibit Terminal Values. However, Terminal Values can be changed and this can be seen when there is a change of top management or CEO.

Sources of Values

1. Family Factor

The most important factor which influences the value system of an individual is his immediate family. Some values are inculcated in A person learn and develops values from the following sources the individuals from the childhood and remain in his mind throughout his life. The child rearing practices the parents adopt shape the personality of the human being. Family is the most influential factor in the individual’s learning of social behaviour, values and norms.

2. Social Factors

Out of all the social factors school plays the most important role in developing the value system of an individual. The child learns the basic discipline from the school. Moreover, the interactions with the teachers, classmates and other staff members in the schools and colleges make the child inculcate values important to the teaching-learning process. Other social factors which may affect values are religious economic and political institutional in the society.

3. Personal Factors

Personal traits such as intelligence, ability, appearance and educational level of the person determine his development of values. For example, if a person is highly intelligent, he will understand the values faster. If he is highly educated, high values will be inculcated in him by his school and college.

4. Cultural Factors

Cultural factors include everything that is learned and passed on from generation to generation. Culture includes certain beliefs and other patterns of behaviour. An individual is a participant in social culture, group culture and organisational culture. Thus, he is known as a composite of many cultural elements. Culture is based on certain implicit and explicit values. For example, whether a person is co-operative, friendly or hostile depends upon to which culture he belongs to Individual relationships are different in different cultures and within certain groups of society also. Whether, the individual values money making or doing service to the mankind again depends upon his cultural background.

5. Religious Factors

Individuals, generally, receive strength and comfort from their religion. Religion comprises of a formal set of values which are passed on from generation to generation. Advancement in technology has under viewed faith in traditional religious beliefs and values.

6. Life Experiences

A man learns the most from his own personal life experience. Sometimes man can learn from the experience of others also. In the long run, most of the values which influence our behaviour are validated by the satisfaction we have experienced in pursuing them. Individuals work out their values on the basis of what seems most logical to them.

Values carry importance in direct proportion to how much faith the individual has in them. He should have those values which can stand the test of reality. He should not have rigid values but flexible system which can change with the changes in the individual himself, his life situation and the socio-economic environment.

7. Role Demands

The role demand refers to the behaviour associated with a particular position in the organisation. All organisations have some formal and some informal code of behaviour. Role demand can create problems when there is a role conflict. Thus, the managers will have to quickly learn the value system prevalent in the organisation.

If they want to move up the ladder of success. For example, if the informal code of behaviour says that the manager must mix up socially with the subordinates, he should learn to do so even though, his personal value system conflicts with his role as a manager.

8. Halo Effect

The halo effect refers to the tendency of judging people on the’ basis of a single trait, which may be good or bad, favourable or un-favourable. Sometimes, we judge a person by one first impression about him or her. For example, if a person is kind, he will also be perceived as good, able, helpful, cheerful, nice, and intelligent and so on.

On the other hand, if a person is abrasive, he shall also be perceived as bad, awful, unkind, aggressive, harmful and wicked. Thus, what one sees in the universe depends partly on one’s inner needs. Thus, with the help of halo effect, we see certain values in others which are actually not there, but we perceive them to be there.

The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) 

The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) is a values classification instrument. Developed by social psychologist Milton Rokeach, the instrument is designed for rank-order scaling of 36 values, including 18 terminal 18 instrumental values. 

RVS has been studied in the context of personality psychology, behavior, marketing, social structure and cross-cultural studies. There have been a number of attempts to reduce the 18 instrumental values and 18 terminal values into a set of underlying factors, but without consistent success. 

The terminal values in RVS are

1.   True Friendship

2.   Mature Love

3.   Self-Respect

4.   Happiness

5.   Inner Harmony

6.   Equality

7.   Freedom

8.   Pleasure

9.   Social Recognition

10.    Wisdom

11.    Salvation

12.    Family Security

13.    National Security

14.    A Sense of Accomplishment

15.    A World of Beauty

16.    A World at Peace

17.    A Comfortable Life

18.    An Exciting Life

 The Instrumental Values are

1.   Cheerfulness

2.   Ambition

3.   Love

4.   Cleanliness

5.   Self-Control

6.   Capability

7.   Courage

8.   Politeness

9.   Honesty

10. Imagination

11. Independence

12. Intellect

13. Broad-Mindedness

14. Logic

15. Obedience

16. Helpfulness

17. Responsibility

18. Forgiveness