Researching values in organisations and leadership

Abstract

Values are essential to understand but difficult to define. As any set of acts in everyday work is value-driven (Askeland et al., 2020), values can be understood as 'that which is worth having, doing, and being (i.e., normative goods or "ends")' (Selznick, 1992, p. 60). However, if you ask organisational members to define their values or elaborate on their organisation's values, they often have problems answering. If you ask them to define the values that are important to them on a personal level, their answers will most likely be quite divergent and not necessarily reflect their employer's official core values.