This week’s topic is emotions, moods, personality and values. These are topics that have a great impact on the work environment. One topic that I found interesting to discuss is the issue of values. Normally, when a company is founded, one of its first activities is to define its mission and values, a study by Dermol and Širca (2018) shows a relationship between these two components and the company’s performance. However, in some companies, it seems that these principles are only on paper and are not put into practice.
A company has several mechanisms to guarantee its values, such as a compliance system or a code of ethics, but how can we ensure that these systems work in a society where values seem to be relativized? It seems that bad behavior by some people is currently rewarded. One case I can mention is that of Anna Sorokin, a fraudster who stole a lot of money in New York, harming many people. Even so, she has fans and was even invited to participate in a famous dance program as a celebrity recently. Or when a law in California defines thefts of less than 950 dollars as misdemeanors instead of felonies, some people use this loophole in the law to commit crimes.
After a little social analysis, let’s look at a business case. Robbins and Judge (2022) presents the case of fraud committed at Wells Fargo, showing that the values that the organization has are not always what is put into practice. Robbins and Judge (2022) also says that: “Values contain a judgmental element because they carry an individual’s ideas about what is right, good, or desirable.” And the author shows that “many of the values we hold are established in our early years – by parents, teachers, friends, and others.” This shows that we are absorbing society’s values. Cases like Wells Fargo can cause an image crisis in the company, causing a lack of trust among customers, depending on the situation, even causing the company to go bankrupt. The 2008 crisis, which broke Lehman Brothers, generated a crisis of distrust in the market after the discovery of the main reason for the crisis, in addition to a financial crisis, it is a crisis of values.
Delving deeper into this subject, Shalom Schwartz organized Rockeach’s value theory into 10 dimensions as shown in Robbins and Judge (2022): “achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, security, and power.”
The paper by Lechner et al. (2024) said that the 10 dimensions are included in 4 larger dimensions: “Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence, and Self-Enhancement.” These values refer to human motivation, which is the openness to new experiences, the maintenance of traditions, the prioritization of the well-being of others, and the intention to seek personal success. The authors want to measure these values through a scale called HOVS17. Lechner et al. (2024) want to show how values influence well-being and personality traits. Research like this in search of methodologies for measuring values can show ways to achieve greater alignment of values between organizations and employees. Society needs to find ways to guarantee values such as integrity and trust in order to avoid future crises.
References
Dermol, V., & Širca, N. T. (2018). Communication, company mission, organizational values, and company performance. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 238, 542-551. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042818300648Links to an external site.
Fessler, L. (2022, February 11). Anna Sorokin made $200,000 in prison art to land herself an apartment. Los Angeles Magazine. https://lamag.com/news-and-politics/anna-sorokin-made-200000-in-prison-art-to-land-herself-an-apartmentLinks to an external site.
Lechner, C. M., Beierlein, C., Davidov, E., & Schwartz, S. H. (2024). Measuring the Four Higher-Order Values in Schwartz’s Theory: Validation of a 17-Item Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1-14. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/00223891.2024.2311193?needAccess=Links to an external site.
Lehman Brothers’ collapse: The beginning of the greatest crisis of this century. (2021, September 15). Sarajevo Times. https://sarajevotimes.com/the-collapse-of-lehman-brothers-bank-the-beginning-of-the-greatest-crisis-of-this-century/Links to an external site.
Prop 47 resentencing. (n.d.). Nevada Courts. https://www.nevada.courts.ca.gov/divisions/criminal-misdemeanor/prop-47-resentencingLinks to an external site.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2022). Essentials of Organizational Behavior (15th ed.). Pearson.
Statista Research Department. (2023, April 20). Largest bankruptcies in the United States as of April 2023, by assets. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096794/largest-bankruptcies-usa-by-assets/Links to an external site.
Time Staff. (2022, February 16). Rachel Williams on Anna Delvey: My Friend Anna. Time. https://time.com/6146419/inventing-anna-rachel-williams-anna-delvey/Links to an external site.
Yasharoff, H. (2022, February 17). Where is Anna Delvey (aka Anna Sorokin) now? Here’s what we know. Today. https://www.today.com/popculture/tv/anna-delvey-now-rcna15204Links to an external site.
