Setting the Foundations for Theoretical Progress toward Understanding the Role of Values in Organisational Behaviour: Commentary on “Values at Work: The Impact of Personal Values in Organisations” by Arieli,Sagiv, and Roccas

Arieli, Sagiv, and Roccas’s lead article provides a timely and important review of the role of individual values and their role in organisations. At the same time as identifying several key areas of progress, the review identifies significant gaps. In this commentary, we focus on additional gaps that merit attention. In particular, we highlight a need for greater theoretical clarity in the literature about the concrete ways in which values are instantiated in different organisational contexts, roles, and cultural settings. We argue that the growing importance of values in studies of organisational contexts would be well-served by more precision in how they are conceptualised and operationalised in studies of organisational behaviour.     

What Is the Practical Utility of Value Research for Organisational Practitioners in a Global Context?

The lead article by Arieli and colleagues provides an overview of value research in broadly defined organisational contexts. The proposed aim of the review is to “integrate theories and empirical studies aiming to portray the role of personal values in shaping the choices and behavior in work settings” (p. 1). In my review I highlight problems with implicit assumptions and limitations of the current literature, in particular: (1) the assumption that values show a universal structure across populations and situations; (2) the assumption that values are relatively stable over a person's career; (3) the unclear ontological status of values combined with a lack of studies examining causality underlying value-behaviour correlations; (4) the relative effect sizes of value research and their organisational relevance; and (5) unclear paths for actions that organisations may take based on the current value literature (what interventions can organisations adopt to improve value profiles?). In summary, the review provides a summary of current organisational value research that highlights how much we still have to understand about value processes.     

Who Cares about Justice? The Moderating Effect of Values on the Link between Organisational Justice and Work Behaviour

On s’est demandé, dans cette recherche, si les valeurs modérent la relation entre les perceptions de la justice procédurale et les variables d’intervention au travail. Selon le modèle relationnel d’autorité (Tyler et Lind 1992), l’effet de la justice procédurale sur l’engagement dans l’organisation, sur les aspects facilitants et dynamiques du comportement extra‐rôle dépendraient des orientations axiologiques des individus. Les résultats montrent que les employés de structures britanniques et germaniques qui font montre d’ouverture au changement (Schwartz 1992) sont plus influencés dans leur engagement dans leur entreprise et le comportement extra‐rôle par l’absence de justice perçue que ceux qui n’endossent pas les valeurs d’ouverture au changement. Les effets du comportement extra‐rôle étaient plus forts parmi les sujets britanniques. Les valeurs de conservation atténuent la relation entre la justice et l’engagement dans l’organisation uniquement chez les Allemands. Ces résultats permettent de mieux comprendre la façon dont la mesure des valeurs peut expliquer des différences culturelles dans les effets de la perception de la justice. This study examined whether values moderate the relationship between procedural justice perceptions and work outcome variables. Based on the relational model of authorities ( Tyler & Lind, 1992 ), it was predicted that the effect of procedural justice on organisational commitment and on self‐reported compliant and proactive aspects of extra‐role behaviour would depend on the value orientations of individuals. It was found that employees from British and German organisations who endorsed Schwartz's (1992 ) openness to change values were more influenced in their organisational commitment and compliant extra‐role behaviour by the absence of perceived justice than those who do not endorse openness values. The effects found for extra‐role behaviour were stronger among UK respondents. Conservation values moderated the relation between justice and organisational commitment only among Germans. These moderation findings extend our understanding of the way that value measures can explain cultural differences in the effects of perceived organisational justice.     

New Migrants in Residential Aged Care: Managing Diversity in Not-for-Profit Organisations

This paper draws on qualitative interviews with migrant Indo-Asian and African personal care workers and registered and enrolled nurses employed by two not-for-profit residential aged care organisations in Australia: AnglicareSA and Resthaven Inc. The paper examines the way these culturally and linguistically diverse staff talk about the safe organisational environment provided by their employers, while in the wider Australian environment, low levels of hostility towards migrants and refugees are a constant cultural force. We demonstrate the impact of these organisations’ foundational ethics and values that influence how human resource diversity management strategies impact on the quality care provided to residents. We argue that this ethic and these human resource strategies act as conduits for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) staff to integrate into the workforce and as a mechanism in assisting new migrants to transition into the wider Australian society, while at the same time enriching the care of the older persons.     

Person–Organisation Fit Across Cultures: An Empirical Investigation of Individualism and Collectivism

The present study extended person–organisation fit research by concentrating exclusively on one national culture dimension affecting organisational values: individualism–collectivism (I–C). Volunteers ( N =581) from two matched organisations (hospitals and management consultancies) in Australia and in South‐East Asia completed questionnaires measuring individuals' orientations on I–C and other organisational variables. Two types of fit were analysed: interactions between (1) individual I–C and national culture, and (2) individual I–C and organisational culture. These interactions were tested in relation to three outcome variables: organisational commitment, job satisfaction, and tenure. Both national and organisational differences were found with respect to I–C. Asian organisations were more collectivistic than Australian organisations, and hospitals were more collectivistic than management consultancies. In support of person–nation fit hypotheses, collectivists were more committed to their organisations and had longer tenure than individualists in Asian, as compared to Australian organisations. Interaction terms were significant even in the presence of direct effects of collectivism on organisational commitment and tenure. The same results were not found for job satisfaction. Predicted effects of person–organisation fit were not found at the organisational level within cultures.     

Investigating the individual and organisational predictors of work-related driving crash involvement in Ethiopia

The rate of road traffic injury and death in Ethiopia is at a critical level when compared to rates in high-income countries. Considering the enormity of this issue, research is to identify groups of high-risk road users and the factors contributing to their crash involvement. This study focuses on work-related drivers. This study explores driving behaviour as a mediator of the relationship between organisational and individual attribute factors and self-reported crashes in a sample of 213 work-related drivers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The hypothesised framework identifies driving behaviour as the most proximal determinant of self-reported crashes, and safety values, role overload and self-efficacy as antecedents of driving behaviour. With the exception of the relationship between self-efficacy and driving behaviour, all the hypothesised relationships were supported. We make recommendations for intervention approaches that are theoretically focused and sensitive to the cultural context.     

Personality Architecture and the FFM in Organisational Psychology

Cervone, Shadel, Smith, and Fiori (2006 ) outline an approach to the study of self-regulation that is consistent with but extends research on self-regulation and motivation within organisational psychology. At the same time, their model represents a new perspective for the study of personality processes within organisations and one that conflicts with the existing personality research programmes focused on the five factor model (FFM). We outline the points of differentiation between the two approaches and suggest strategies that we believe will allow personality researchers to build the personality architectures for the trait behaviours derived from the FFM. We also categorise the mediating mechanisms studied in organisational psychology in the KAPA model of Cervone et al. and highlight the need for related frameworks covering affective units and personal competencies in personality architecture.     

The Role of the Group in Individual Functioning: School Identification and the Psychological Well-Being of Staff and Students

Many studies have demonstrated that organisations exert a powerful impact on their members, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are not well understood. In the present paper, using social identity and self-categorisation theories as theoretical frameworks, we explore the role that social identity plays in affecting individual well-being of staff ( N = 113) and students ( N = 693) in two Australian high schools. Well-being includes positive aspects of personal functioning, such as self-esteem, positive affect, and job involvement, but also negative aspects, such as depression, anxiety, loss of emotional control, aggressive and disruptive behaviour. In line with predictions, social identification was significantly related to, and mediated the relationship between, organisational factors and individual psychological well-being. This work provides a bridge between social psychological concepts and the clinical and educational domains. It reinforces the need to integrate the role of the social self and social identity processes in understanding the (individual) psychology of the person.     

Values Espoused by Australian and US Organisations

On a compare´ les valeurs de 132 organisations, 77 australiennes et 55 ame´ricaines, apparie´es selon la branche industrielle. Un logiciel d'analyse de contenu a recense´ les re´fe´rences aux valeurs dans les rapports annuels des anne´es 1986 a` 1990. On a compare´ les fre´quences des re´fe´rences a` neuf valeurs graĉe a` l'analyse de re´gression multiple et a` l'analyse en clusters, ce qui a permis de classer chaque organisation dans l'une de quatre cate´gories the´oriques de´finies par leur profil ou structure de valeurs: Elite, Leadership, Me´ritocratique et Colle´giale (Kabanoff, 1991). Les organisations de type me´ritocratique caracte´risent davantage les organisations ame´ricaines que les organisations australiennes, tandis que l'inverse est vrai pour les organisations de type e´litiste.
Seventy‐seven Australian and 55 US organisations matched by industry were compared in terms of their espoused values by using computer‐aided content analysis to count the value references in their annual reports for the years 1986–1990. Frequencies of reference to nine values were compared using multiple regression and cluster analysis, which assigned organisations to one of four theoretically specified organisational types based on their value structures or profiles—Elite, Leadership, Meritocratic, and Collegial (Kabanoff, 1991). Meritocratic‐type organisations were more prevalent among US than Australian organisations, while the opposite was true for Elite‐type organisations.     

Belief in a just world and organisational loyalty: Trust as an underlying mechanism

This research examined whether employees' personal belief in a just world (BJW) is associated with their organisational loyalty and whether this relationship is statistically mediated by organisational trust. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two studies with employees from China (study 1, N = 314) and Germany (study 2, N = 189). The results from both studies supported the proposed model. In addition, study 2 revealed that the relationship between BJW and organisational loyalty persisted when controlling for global personality traits. These suggest that managers and organisations may increase employees' loyalty by providing an environment that fosters their sense of justice and trust.     

Balance between volunteer work and family roles: Testing a theoretical model of work‐family conflict in the volunteer emergency services

Trends indicate overall declines in numbers of volunteer emergency service workers and suggest negative organisational factors impacting adversely on volunteers and organisations. Conflict between emergency service work and family is implicated in falling volunteer numbers, and there is thus a need for research on difficulties experienced in balancing volunteer work and family. The current study tested an adaptation of the work‐family conflict (WFC) model originally proposed by Frone, Russell, and Cooper, in a sample of 102 couples in which one partner was an Australian emergency service volunteer. Results supported a model in which volunteer work‐related antecedents, including time invested in on‐call emergency activities and post‐traumatic stress symptoms, had indirect links with outcomes, including volunteer burnout and their partners' support for the volunteer work role, through the effects of WFC. These results add to research using theoretical models of paid work processes to better understand the problems faced by volunteer workers, and identify specific antecedents and outcomes of WFC in the volunteer emergency services. Implications for future research and organisations reliant on volunteer workers are discussed.     

The Role of Error Management Culture for Firm and Individual Innovativeness

To innovate at work is risky as every new endeavour is also error‐prone. Therefore, the way errors are managed in organisations may be related to organisations' innovativeness. We studied error management culture as one important and often overlooked organisational culture factor hypothesised to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Error management culture implies that a firm accepts that people make errors and uses “organizational practices related to communicating about errors, to sharing error knowledge, to helping in error situations, and to quickly detecting and handling errors” to deal with errors (Van Dyck, Frese, Baer, & Sonnentag, 2005 , p. 1229). Our sample consists of 30 companies with N = 227 employees. To decrease the problem of common method variance, we split the samples within each company into two subsamples: one subsample was used for the measurement of error management culture and the other one for the measure of organisational innovativeness. A multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) analysis showed error management culture to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Organisational innovativeness was a mediator for the relationship between error management culture and individual innovativeness. A potential implication is that organisations wanting to increase their innovativeness may need to examine their error management culture.     

Psychological Flexibility at Work and Employees' Proactive Work Behaviour: Cross‐Level Moderating Role of Leader Need for Structure

How to promote employees to be proactive behaviourally is a significant issue in the literature because it would benefit organisations in several ways. Drawing on the acceptance and commitment model, we proposed a new antecedent, psychological flexibility that might contribute to employees' proactive work behaviour. Furthermore, we investigated how the contextual role of supervisor need for structure exhibits a cross‐level moderating effect on the relationship between employee psychological flexibility at work and proactive work behaviour based on interactionism. Data from 241 full‐time employees and their corresponding 45 managers indicated that employee psychological flexibility was positively associated with proactive work behaviour. More importantly, the supervisor need for structure played a moderating role, suggesting that employees would demonstrate greater proactive work behaviour especially when the supervisors have a high need for structure. Implications for psychological flexibility, proactivity, and person‐situation interactional research are discussed.     

New parents at work: Jobs, families and the psychological contract

Interviews with seven women and six men who had recently returned to work after becoming first-time parents were carried out to examine experiences of the policies, practices and attitudes of their employers towards new parents, and to assess how far they felt able to discuss their circumstances and changed expectations with their managers. Findings pointed to considerable differences in the attitudes of employers to the men and women. Almost all the women had changed to part-time work, but arranging this had not been easy and some had found it difficult to come to terms with a difference in status. Many of the respondents had reservations about discussing their positions and altered expectations with their managers, and it seemed unlikely that mutually beneficial psychological contracts could be negotiated without changes in organisational cultures and policies. The findings have implications for our understanding of organisational careers and for career-planning interventions in organisations.     

The Cognitive and Affective Components of Organisational Identification: The Role of Perceived Support Values and Charismatic Leadership

This study set out to investigate how the strength of organisational identification is related to organisational support values and charismatic leadership. The perception of organisational support values by an individual employee is a contextual factor which determines whether (a) organisational attributes similar to the self‐concept become salient leading to cognitive identification, and (b) an affective tie between the individual employee and the work organisation is developed. Charismatic leadership, on the other hand, builds a group identity among followers primarily by emotion‐arousing leadership behavior, and therefore was hypothesised to relate more strongly to affective, rather than cognitive, identification. Two hundred employees from a public organisation filled in a number of questionnaire measures of organisational support values, charismatic leadership, and organisational identification. The findings showed that support values predicted both cognitive and affective identification, whereas charismatic leadership was a predictor of affective identification. There was also a significant interaction effect of organisational support values and charismatic leadership on affective identification; in the condition of low support value orientation, charismatic leadership was shown to be positively associated with affective identification. These findings indicate that organisational values are basic elements of self‐implicating processes in organisational contexts, and their practical implications are discussed.     

Applied Social Psychology: A Critical Theoretical Perspective

The purpose of this analysis is to review, through a critical theoretical lens, social psychology applied to work and organisations. In our reading of the applied social psychological literature four key issues emerged. These include the valorisation of a positivist epistemology, an owner/management perspective on workplace issues, a focus on intra‐psychic variables or internal mental states when accounting for organisational problems, and the ignoring of moral and ethical commitments in determining workplace research and practice. Each of these issues is then further analysed in light of insights from the field of Critical Management Studies. This alternative approach to organisational behaviour points to the ways in which applied social psychological theory and practice have the potential to disadvantage workers.     

The Interplay of Low Identification,Psychological Detachment,and Cynicism for Predicting Counterproductive Work Behaviour

Prior research suggests that psychological detachment buffers the detrimental effects of negative work events and stressors on employees’ subsequent performance and well-being. This, however, assumes that employees are motivated to reengage in their work following detachment, which may not always be true. Our paper examines the potential dark side of psychological detachment by exploring its moderating effects on the relationship of low organisational identification with counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) via cynicism toward work. Based on self-discrepancy theory, we argue that detachment strengthens the link from low identification to cynicism because it reinforces the psychological distance of lowly identified employees with the organisation and provides them with additional resources to more deeply reflect on their mismatch with their organisation, thus generating stronger feelings of doubt and distrust that characterise cynicism. We also hypothesise that detachment strengthens the relation from cynicism to CWB, because detachment reinforces personal separation from work in cynical employees and because cynical employees may leverage their replenished resources to fuel deviant acts. Multi-wave data collected from two field samples support our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our study and propose future research directions.     

How university members see the pastoral role of the academic

An enquiry into how students and staff at one English university perceived personal tutoring arrangements and the role of personal supervisors is reported. Following a discussion of the principles and problems of personal tutoring in higher education, the setting and the research method are briefly outlined. Survey results are presented, and the commentary focuses on convergences and divergences between the two groups' expectations, conceptions and evaluations. Reasons for student criticism of supervisors, especially in the field of personal counselling and pastoral care, are discussed and related to the existing organisational structure and dominant institutional values. It is nevertheless concluded that the pastoral role of the academic could be made viable, and a possible recasting is proposed.     

Social Identity, Self-categorization, and Work Motivation: Rethinking the Contribution of the Group to Positive and Sustainable Organisational Outcomes

Traditional needs theories centre around hierarchies ranging from 'lower-level' needs for security, existence, or hygiene through to 'higher-level' needs for self-actualisation, achievement, and growth. As applied to the organisational domain, such theories tend to assume that an employee's personal need for challenge and development is the best source of work motivation. Based on social identity and self-categorisation theories, this paper interprets needs hierarchies as reflections of the variable definition of self. It suggests that the motivational impact of different needs changes as a function of the salience of norms and goals associated with self-categories defined at varying levels of abstraction (personal, social, human). As a result, no one level of need is inherently more relevant to employee motivation than any other. This analysis also suggests that group-based needs will play an especially important motivational role in situations where an individual's social identity is salient. Following work by Tyler, data that support this argument are provided by a study in which employees' willingness to engage in citizenship behaviour increased following manipulations of group-based pride and respect. Results point to the productive and sustainable potential of self-actualisation at a collective rather than just a personal level.     

Personal Values and Behavior: Taking the Cultural Context into Account

Taking a cross-cultural perspective, we review recent advancement in theory and empirical research on the relationships between personal values and behavior. Although personal values have been examined in many studies, systematic, theory-based, cross-cultural comparisons of the relations of personal values and behavior are rare. In this review, we offer suggestions for research within an integrative perspective that links culture, personal values, and behavior. People from different cultures vary in the extent to which they use their internal attributes to guide their behavior. Thus, the strength of the relationships between values and behavior differs across cultural groups. Culture also moderates the relationships between values and behavior by determining the repertoire of normative behaviors. Culture determines the meaning of behavior, so that seemingly similar behaviors may have different meanings in different cultures. Finally, we discuss the possible effect of the increasing heterogeneity of society on the relationship of values and behavior.