Rediscovering Lost Values: Exploring Contextual and Universal Views of Values within Leadership

Abstract

. . .the first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that reality hinges on moral foundations (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his sermon, Rediscovering Lost Values).Dr. martin luther king, jr. delivered Rediscovering Lost Values sermon as guest minister at Second Baptist Church in Detroit, MI in 1954. Throughout sermon, Dr. King (a civil rights leader and pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA) discusses his belief that our values have taken turn for worse. He states that people tend to change their values and morals to fit given situation, and urges congregation to understand that all reality hinges on moral foundations.While Dr. King delivered this sermon many years ago, concept of valuesbased approaches to leadership (i.e., transformational, authentic, spiritual, servant, charismatic, ethical, etc.) is still current and highly researched topic in leadership. The basic tenet of values-based approaches to leadership is that leaders can and should influence followers' values in order to motivate employees and achieve superior performance (Avolio et al., 2009). This idea is not new, as Chester Barnard (1938, p. 279) stated, the distinguishing mark of managerial responsibility is that it requires not merely conformance to complex code of morals but also creation of moral codes for others. However, question of origin of these values differs within leadership approaches, where specific role of values tends to fall within two separate views. Some approaches view leader values as universal; in other words, leader always espouses his/her personal values to their followers. Other approaches contend that leader's espoused values depend on context, and could be either leader's personal values, those of organization, or even aligned to meet expectations of their followers (Shamir, 2007). This distinction is important because followers often link leader's espoused values with their own, which impacts their commitment to leader's mission and their overall performance (Brown and Trevino, 2009). Values-based leadership depends on moral content conveyed (Burns, 1998), and leader may impart values set forth by organization or situation instead of leader's personal values (Carlson and Perrewe, 1995).Therefore, purpose of this paper is to explore alignment of values within leadership in order to approach universal versus contextual debate. To that end, we begin with review of current literature, which includes overview of values, as well as context-specific and universal approaches to valuesbased leadership. Next, we provide overview of our focal leader (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and values lexicon methodology used to assess his espoused values through his most prominent speeches and sermons. Finally, results are presented, followed by discussion section and conclusion.Literature reviewValuesValues are defined in numerous ways in literature, sometimes with little agreement between definitions. Yukl (1998) contended that values are attitudes about what is right and wrong, ethical or unethical, moral and unmoral (Yukl, 1998, p. 234). Meglino and Ravlin (1998) viewed values in concert with behavior, suggesting that values are a person's internalized belief about how he or she should or ought to behave (p. 354). A common definition, suggested by Rokeach (1973, p. 5), views value as an enduring belief that specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.Following Rokeach (1973), Schwartz (1992) developed theory of basic human values based on ten values that focus on motivation of individual: Power, Achievement, Hedonism, Stimulation, Self-direction, Universalism, Benevolence, Tradition, Conformity, and Security (Appendix A provides description of each value). …