Espoused Values of Organisations

Abstract

We review a series of studies whose focus is the measurement and comparison of values espoused by organisations in their public documents, in particular their annual reports. We begin by considering the construct of organizational values and the advantages and assumptions involved in using content-analysis of organizational documents to measure espoused values. Three interrelated studies of espoused organisational values are then described. The first of these investigates the value profiles of a sample of large Australian companies in order to test the validity of a previously developed typology of organisational values derived from distributive and procedural justice theory (Kabanoff, 1991). Changes in organisational values over time for the same group of companies are then considered. This study illustrates that how one studies value change, either in a univariate way by comparing single values over time or by comparing the incidence of different organisational ‘types’, that is organisational with different types of value profiles, significantly influences the results and interpretations of changes over time. The final study is a cross-national comparison involving Australian and US organisations that reveals several meaningful differences between the countries in the incidence of organisations with different value profiles. We conclude with a brief discussion of future planned research using the same methodology and focusing on the role of espoused values in organisational mergers and acquisitions.