An exploration into the relationship between managers' personal values and their interpretation of their organisation's corporate values

The predominant assumption in the management literature is that corporate valuesare internalised into organisational members' personal value systems. Corporatevalues, viewed in this way, perform a controlling role in organisations, consistentwith the characteristics of a deliberate strategy perspective. Theories concerningthe nature of personal values challenge this assumption of corporate valueinternalisation. However, there is a lack of empirical research in the managementfield investigating the relationship between personal and corporate value systems.In this interpretive research study, I explore managers' interpretation of theirorganisation's corporate values, and relate these to their personal value priorities.Senior managers from three commercial companies took part in the study: onewith no published corporate values statement; one with a recently introducedstatement; and the third with a well established corporate values statement. Iexplore how managers interpret their organisation's corporate values through thedescription and meaning they give to value terms, and elicit their personal valuesby using an adaptation of the laddering technique, and by inferring valuesrevealed in managers' narrative of their career histories.The findings show that managers feel they share their corporate values butinterpret them in differing ways, both through those they identify as representingthe corporate values, and through the meaning they give to value terms. Thevariation in interpretation is consistent with differences in their own personalvalue priorities, suggesting that managers adapt corporate values so that they moreclosely reflect their own. These findings challenge the notion that corporatevalues provide an effective means of normative control, and instead suggest theylegitimise the worldview of individual managers, thus enabling differences to beaccommodated within a broad framework of shared values. A model of valuerelationships is proposed, suggesting a way that corporate values may assist inbringing together deliberate and emergent strategy perspectives.