Values Congruence from the Executives’ Viewpoint: Value-Based Practices

Abstract

IntroductionRelevance of the research. Dolan et al. (2006) argues that leaders and managers today are perhaps facing the biggest challenge in the history, striving with how to create and maintain successful organizations based on what is equally good for business, people and society. Harmonizing the beliefs and values of owners of the company and employees is a vital source of competitive advantage. However, for many organizations development and management of common values system becomes an insurmountable problem because of the lack of the identity and consistency of management. Identity is managed only from the top to bottom, i.e. there is no feedback, the needs of employees, consumers, and other stakeholder groups are perceived insufficiently and/or receive little attention, therefore, the declared values of organization are understood and acceptable not to all members of organization (Juscius, 2009; Vveinhardt, Andriukaitiene, 2015; Zukauskas, Vveinhardt, 2009). In the recent decades this issue is increasingly discussed both in business practice and in scientific literature, however, it is still not easy to answer the crucial question of how to put values in actions. It is often debated that organizations often only formally incorporate values provision into their management schemes and structures. As a result, the gap between publicly declared values, ideals of organization and actual practice inevitably occurs. Therefore, lasting organizational values must be shaped omitting the contradiction with the values of individuals and groups, but by combining them, transferring the best values of each member of the organization to the common system of values, which is purposefully managed in practice of organizational activities. According to Dolan et al. (2006) management by values is a relatively new approach to governance and organizational practice concerned with developing management systems that are capable of integrating values into organizational strategies, policies, procedures, and programs.The research aims to find out how certain organizations work with values in their practice and identify possible reasons for strong value congruence in some organizations.The central problem of the research is posed by the question: what ways of strengthening the congruence of personal and organizational values are applied in organizations from the viewpoint of executives and how to harmonize individual employees' values and those prevailing in the organization?Problem exploration level: a wide range of scientists have explored value congruence phenomenon ant it's impact on employee and organization (Meglino, Ravlin, 1998; Verplanken, 2004; Edwards, Cable, 2009; Hoffman et al., 2011). There have been many empirical studies that have examined the value congruence phenomenon positive affect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and negative affect on turnover intention (Westerman, Cyr, 2004; Ostroffet al., 2005; Amos, Weathington, 2008; Ren, Hamann, 2015), employees' motivation (Lawrence, 2006; Posner, 2010; Ren, 2010). Previous researches have established a significant correlation between levels of stress and higher incongruence, which is ultimately manifested by a value conflict, leads to high levels of stress and to possibly even leaving the organization (Liedtka, 1989; Bouckenooghe et al., 2005; Medina et al., 2005; Lamm et al., 2010). A variety of types are used to conduct a comprehensive personal and organizational value congruence analysis in organizations: subjective (Cable, Edwards, 2004; Verplanken, 2004; Edwards, Cable, 2009), perceived (Kallas et al., 2010; Hoffman et al., 2011), objective (Suar, Khuntia, 2010) and even triangulation (Knoppen et al., 2006). However, qualitative case studies that have examined causes of the congruence between employees' values and organization values from executives' perspectives, have not been found.Limitations of the research. This study analyses values congruence only from executives' perspective. …