Understandable and functional organizational values: true or false?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that in many earlier value studies, the emphasis has been in value management: this paper contributes to the value discussion through personnel perceptions in organizations (in different hierarchical levels). The aim is to study value processing more closely at company level and to find out what the phenomenon in practice means to the personnel: how they understand it. There is often said to be a contradiction between official and perceived values among personnel: these are studied further in this paper. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative, multiple case study, interviews analyzed by content analysis. Findings – This paper demonstrates value perceptions among personnel in three case companies and emphasizes the importance of mutual understanding of values in every day life. Personnel perceptions of organizational values are presented; especially the understanding of values as a management tool is studied further: values have to be understood through the own work before they can be really functional. Research limitations/implications – The quotations are interpreted through content analysis, so maybe another (e.g. discourse analysis) would have given deeper insight. Three different case companies are maybe too little to make any general assumptions. Practical implications – The need to reach mutual understanding about values among the whole personnel (not just the management) is extremely important in successful value processing. Too often these “soft” issues are forgotten and values are just declared by the management: no real understanding about organizational values exist. The practical implications are presented when suggestions for better values processing are given. Originality/value – The paper demonstrates personnel perceptions in understanding organizational values. It is extremely important to clarify how people understand organizational values, before proceeding to the implementation process. This is too often forgotten in values studies.