Browsing by Author "Bourne, Humphrey"

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    An exploration into the relationship between managers' personal values and their interpretation of their organisation's corporate values
    (Cranfield University, 2002-06) Bourne, Humphrey; Jenkins, Mark
    The predominant assumption in the management literature is that corporate values are internalised into organisational members' personal value systems. Corporate values, viewed in this way, perform a controlling role in organisations, consistent with the characteristics of a deliberate strategy perspective. Theories concerning the nature of personal values challenge this assumption of corporate value internalisation. However, there is a lack of empirical research in the management field investigating the relationship between personal and corporate value systems. In this interpretive research study, I explore managers' interpretation of their organisation's corporate values, and relate these to their personal value priorities. Senior managers from three commercial companies took part in the study: one with no published corporate values statement; one with a recently introduced statement; and the third with a well established corporate values statement. I explore how managers interpret their organisation's corporate values through the description and meaning they give to value terms, and elicit their personal values by using an adaptation of the laddering technique, and by inferring values revealed in managers' narrative of their career histories. The findings show that managers feel they share their corporate values but interpret them in differing ways, both through those they identify as representing the corporate values, and through the meaning they give to value terms. The variation in interpretation is consistent with differences in their own personal value priorities, suggesting that managers adapt corporate values so that they more closely reflect their own. These findings challenge the notion that corporate values provide an effective means of normative control, and instead suggest they legitimise the worldview of individual managers, thus enabling differences to be accommodated within a broad framework of shared values. A model of value relationships is proposed, suggesting a way that corporate values may assist in bringing together deliberate and emergent strategy perspectives.
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    Mapping espoused organizational values
    (Springer, 2017-11-17) Bourne, Humphrey; Jenkins, Mark; Parry, Emma
    This paper develops an inventory and conceptual map of espoused organizational values. We suggest that espoused values are fundamentally different to other value forms as they are collective value statements that need to coexist as a basis for organizational activity and performance. The inventory is built from an analysis of 3112 value items espoused by 554 organizations in the UK and USA in both profit and not-for-profit sectors. We distil these value items into 85 espoused value labels, and these are assessed in terms of their similarity and difference through judgements made by 53 experienced individuals. The resulting conceptual map facilitates the evaluation of values which are espoused at the organizational level, as opposed to aggregations of personal values, an important distinction that is often ignored in the literature. This analysis identifies a number of distinct areas of emphasis occupied by espoused values. In particular, the richness of value labels that relates to broader ethical issues may be aimed at external stakeholder management, but also may have an increasing influence on organizational behaviour as they are embedded into organizational practices. By advancing our understanding of espoused values, through an analysis of those being used in practice, we provide a means by which future research into organizational values and ethical issues can progress.
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    Organizational Values: A Dynamic Perspective
    (SAGE, 2013-04) Bourne, Humphrey; Jenkins, Mark
    We make the case that there are four distinct forms of organizational values – espoused, attributed, shared and aspirational. These partial, but related forms encompass variation in temporal orientation and levels of analysis. We use these forms to reveal the dynamic nature of organizational values by delineating the evolution of gaps and overlaps between them. We set out a series of propositions, originating from institutional, organizational and managerial sources to explain the nature of movement between these distinct forms of values and the potential implications for organizational behaviour and performance. Finally, we consider the possibilities of this fine-grained analysis of the organizational values concept for future research.