Comments on: Five Reasons Why It Makes No Sense to Establish Corporate Values

By: Dan Nienhauser

Dan Nienhauser — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:53:41 +0000

Interesting thoughts and outline…although maybe I misunderstood my recent Stacey reading (granted it was Complexity and Management, and will have to get and read the next in the series as you mentioned); but Organizations have values through the collective Complex Responsive Processes and the complex systems framework with establish to facility activity and communication. We are individuals with values and perspective, and yet we are also groups/units/departments and even organizations which are the “responsive processes” regardless of what is on the wall, and often in contrast to.

By: Tom Gibbons

Tom Gibbons — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:35:11 +0000

I think it’s an important point that not having shared values does not mean values are not important. Interesting how people come to that conclusion. Some readers of this blog might be interested to read a bit about our strategy… which incorpoarates the concepts outlined above and does not include shared values: http://www.tms-americas.com/blog.cfm?id=231691869

By: Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:14:01 +0000

Point 4 I have derived from Stacey rather than Weick. The idea of organisations as complex responsive processes of communication comes from Ralph Stacey’s work – his book called Complex Responsive Processes in Organisations is a good place to start – find it on Google.

I have found some of Weick’s ideas very useful, and he may have written about related ideas but I did not get this idea from Weick.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:02:35 +0000

Point four sounds decidely Weickish – is it?

Lovely set of comments, I really like them.

By: Tim Wright

Tim Wright — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:03:13 +0000

Interesting post Stephen. I would agree that an organisation in and of itself cannot have values, and would, like you, be very wary of anything written up on a wall chart – heaven knows I have come across that in many places and found it generally to regarded as a joke and make management a hostage to fortune. But do you think shared values which have perhaps played a part in attracting people to work together under the umbrella of an organisation or shared values that emerge and become apparent over time amongst the group of people in an organisation have any application or use?

I say this as the finest organisation I have ever worked for did have a very rigorous recruitment process which was interested in understanding peoples values as these set a moral compass for the individuals to act relatively autonomously in complex situations. As you say there is a danger of recruiting in a common image but only if it gets very precious and picky – which they weren’t

I wonder also if values played a part in the recent financial meltdown, or indeed if we look back a bit further to the Enrons of this world? It is not often that I have found myself in agreement with Alan Greenspan but I think what he said then was pretty much on the button “rules cannot substitute for character” and values invested in the individual have some relevance in character it seems to me.

By: Mika Latokartano

Mika Latokartano — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:07:23 +0000

Forgot that link to Nick Milton’s blog. Here it is
http://www.nickmilton.com/2009/07/tacit-or-explicit-transfer-which-works.html

By: Mika Latokartano

Mika Latokartano — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:28:11 +0000

Interesting five points, and I agree with you.

There’s been an interesting discussion on Nick Milton’s blog about an exercise he did during a KM masterclass. Participating in that and having found this blog entry of yours on corporate values via a tweet by David Gurteen (http://twitter.com/DavidGurteen), I realised that you could almost replace the word ‘values’ with ‘knowledge’ in those five points, and it would make sense.