Stephen Billing’s Blog

In which my views on shared values are challenged.

A previous post entitled Three Reasons Not To Aim for Shared Values attracted a lot of comments. In particular, thanks to CV Harquail of the Authentic Organisations blog for challenging me with the following post. I reply below.

Stephen,
I’m not quite sure what it is about shared values that you are against (in this post)… Is it
- having any sharing at all?
- the idea that “shared values” are often but not always imposed by top mgmt?
- the idea that “words on the wall” are not actually ’shared’ values?
- the belief that sharing values means subordinating one’s personal self? You’ve got a lot going on here… worth teasing out.

Shared values, as I see them, (just as a start) are
(1) an integral, critical,
(2) ground-up, cohering element in an organization.
(3) Every organization has shared values of some kind — otherwise there would be no grounds for collective action.
(4) Values that are actually shared are not always the same as those denoted by mgmt as “shared values”.
(5) Sharing some values with your co-members doesn’t need to preclude being authentic and retaining your own values.
How do these claims about values fit with what you want to challenge?

Here is my response.

First of all, let me summarise the argument of my previous post:

• The very act of setting out to establish shared values assumes they are necessary to make the organisation a better place to work
   

• Shared values are often part of an initiative to bring about the desired organisation that the top people want 
   
• The organisation will be more harmonious if it has shared values. This assumes in a taken-for-granted way that the absence of conflict is good for the organisation and so is the absence of diversity of values
   
• I take the stance that conflict is a part of all human relating and conflict cannot be legistlated away through prescribing shared values, no matter how much involvement there is from representatives of the troops
   
• Shared values takes the focus off what is going on right now.

By the way, if you have read this far, the potential conflict between my point of view and CV’s is no doubt a part of the attraction. As I say, conflict is a part of all human relating!

1. Are shared values integral and critical? To say they are integral and critical implies that without shared values there will not be a good organisation. How do you know the values are shared? Inevitably through a process of working them out and creating artifacts such as posters that remind people of the values. Values, though, are in conflict with each other and are tested in the crucible of personal experience, as people face particular situations. For example, in a hospital, dealing with someone who has been waiting for 4 hours or a new person who will die if they are not attended to immediately is the kind of situation that those working in hospitals often face.This sort of dilemma and conflict is a far cry from the exercises of shared values.
    
2. Far from being ground up activities, most shared values exercises are top down with the involvement of people that amounts to a manipulation of those with less power – involve them and we can influence them to our way of thinking. Cohering can be seen as a pattern of relating. Such cohesion is an emergent property of self-organising human interation, it does not come about as a result of an exercise in shared values.
    
3. As I see it, the grounds for collective action are local human interaction and power relating. To say that shared values are a motive for collective action is saying that the cause of change is rational thought through articulating shared values that will then give rise to collective action. I think it is not rational thought through shared values that generates collective action, but rather the interaction itself between diverse human beings that gives rise to the potential for transformative change and collective action. The values that have been previously agreed play a part as the intentions of an individual, but collective action is dependent on the interplay of intentions between all the people involved, not just the coalition of the most powerful.
    
4. I agree that the values decreed by management are not always the actual shared values of those in the organisation. This is part of the reason we should not bother with posters. But what values are actually shared?  I think we share our collective identities from those groups we identify with, and these form our ideologies or social beliefs.
    
5. Your comment about not losing your own identity highlights that we all have collective and individual identities. Individual selves are formed from the silent conversations we have with ourselves, influenced by and inluencing our collective identities, which are formed from our views about what those we identify with think about us.

To summarise:

As human beings in organisations, we are interacting with each other based on their own intentions, values, ideologies, experiences of the past and expectations for the future. The organisational and individual reality that occurs for people emerges from this interweaving of multiple aspects of human and organisational experience.

Values are only one aspect of the interplay and whether or not these values are shared with others is not that relevant. Values are generalisations based on what we think others believe. They are abstract ideals only and come into reality when negotiated in particular organisational situations. The conflict of values is commonly glossed over or forgotten in most discussions about shared values. For example, the conflict that occurs when acting in your organisation’s interest seems to run against your own interest.

The reality is that we are all dealing with situations where the outcome is unknown. Our values help us to resolve a specific situation but the conflict doesn’t go away. It has to be resolved again next time there is a patient who has been waiting nearly four hours. The circumstances will be a little different and judgement will still be required.

I think that the conflict and uncertainty of negotiating organisational situations is not acknowledged, in fact it is hidden by calls for shared values.