People Management and Organizational Values

Organizational values are the shared perceptions and motives of any group or individual who is affected or can affect the operating business model of any organization, hereafter called “The Stakeholders”. In this essay, I will discuss how people management practices will help define and reinforce organizational values by identifying their source, their potential use, and best leadership practices to sustain them as an integral part of a healthy work culture.?

?????Organizational values are developed as result of peoples’ practices and interactions to meet their business objectives. A revolutionary theory about creating a blockchain of values to any business was introduced first by Professor R.E Freeman who founded the theory of stakeholders, a theory that puts business profits as a second priority when it comes to ethical conduct and creating a common meaningful goal or purpose for businesses to thrive and tell a story of success to new generations. The “what to do” and “how we do” remain the most challenging questions for organizations to answer before the creation of their values. Hence, we should start calling in stakeholders asking them about their own purposes, values, and ethics and how they apply to our organizational model; we shall make them a part of our business story, understand their expectations, and request them to challenge existing values to better off our current practices. Invite stakeholders to ask, act, commit and push back to think of the values on the table and how they could be improved to create a generation that makes our business better. For example, Google, twitter, Facebook, and so many other social media Companies are changing the world including governments and civil societies by giving their audience a space for sharing their own values, passions, needs, and wants thus creating a strong ability to imagine a different world that aligns with the life they want to live (R. Edward Freeman, 2017).

?????More to the above, Professor John Purcell in his Black Box theory, emphasized on how management can seek employee views to make a difference in their plans and decisions. Employees’ voice is something more profound about building a culture of participation and involvement leading to organizational commitment and strengthening the overall organizational engagement. Employees will get engaged when their voice is recognized, their views are sought, their ideas are discussed and challenged regardless of their hierarchy or grade levels. This will create an employee’s trust in management, high level of job satisfaction, involvement in the decision-making process, healthy relationships at work, job challenge, sense of belonging in addition to sense of achievement (John Purcell). An evidence-based case of how people practices can impact brand, culture, and values of their organizations is the Theranos Scandal and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes who prioritized her vision over everything. At Theranos, employees working in different groups were completely siloed by their CEO because they weren’t encouraged to communicate with each other. Collaboration has been assassinated, problem solving was buried, engagement was absent and reduced productivity prevailed. Work-life balance concept was never heard of by the CEO who tracked employees’ attendance as a prison manager; employees were burning out from work hours and stress, others were encouraged to spy on their colleagues to get rewarded, the hiring and firing practices drove by nepotism and unreasonable expectations, the absence of employees’ voice and concerns, inappropriate office relations, all have led to the big failure of a great vision (Ayelet Zamek, 2019).

?????The potential use of organizational values requires an understanding of discrepancies between real and espoused values. Edgar Shcien a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has divided an organization's culture into three distinct levels: artifacts, values, and assumptions. He described organizational culture as an iceberg with the tip having observable artifacts as the visible part of the culture which resembles what the organization finds as meaningful and important in terms of values. The deepest hidden part of the iceberg represents the shared basic assumptions which are the mostly hidden level of beliefs, traits, traditions, and values. They’re what override espoused values when driving the real culture of an organization detected in daily workforce’s behaviour. If any gap exists between espoused and real values, the organization will be in a serious trouble leading to employees’ dissatisfaction, lack of company success, and creating a resistance to change (Marjan Venema ,2021). To close the gap, the organization shall start by assessing its culture, then move to establish policies, programs, and strategies to support its core purpose and espoused values. Effective new hiring practices will help select best cultural fit candidates by aligning interviews with organization's vision, mission, and values statements. Assessments can include subjects of integrity, ethical conduct, team collaboration, knowledge sharing, customer orientation and similar. Getting function managers involved in the hiring process will add leadership commitment to select and retain the best fit workforce that will drive the growth of the organization through all levels having a distinguished employee experience. Onboarding programs will help the organization accommodate the newcomers into the frame of value system, norms, and desired organizational behaviours; reward recognition programs will contribute to the wellbeing of the workforce by providing a feedback tool that informs employees about proper behaviours. However, some challenges may prevail on both legal and global levels: Employers should be careful not to discriminate against any applicants who may not be what the selectors expect especially within male dominated workplaces. Business leaders shall take into serious consideration the prevailing national cultural values in the countries they operate in, for example, you cannot reject a Muslim applicant refusing to work in an office space that doesn’t have a prayer room. Not meeting those expectations from employees may doom the global organization's chance for success in particular countries (SHRM, 2022).?

?????As a conclusion, leadership in every department and in any organization is accountable to demonstrate a sustainable level of behavioural performance that strengthens organizational culture which recognizes those who are best aligned with their mission, vision, and values.?

References:

R. Edward Freeman (2017), "Five Challenges to Stakeholder Theory: A Report on Research in Progress", Stakeholder Management (Business and Society 360, Vol. 1), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 1-20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/S2514-175920170000001 ( Accessed 1st Oct. 2022)?

John Purcell (2013), “ The Future of Engagement: Thought Piece Collection”, University of Bath School of Management, Available at : https://engageforsuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/John-Purcell.pdf ( Accessed 1st Oct. 2022)?

Ayelet Zamek (2019), Theranos and the Modern Workplace, available at: https://medium.com/@zamekaye/theranos-and-the-modern-workplace-12533de2d7f4 (Accessed 15th Sep. 2022)

Marjan Venema (2021) , Espoused Values: Mind the Gap (and How to Close It), available at : https://harkn.com/blog/espoused-values/ ( Accessed 1st Oct, 2022)

SHRM (2022) , Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture, available at: Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture ( shrm.org ) , (Accessed 1st Oct. 2022)