This document discusses values and how they relate to individual behavior and culture. It defines values as stable beliefs that guide preferences and actions. Values are influenced by socialization and form a hierarchy within each person. Personal values can be shared by groups to form organizational or cultural values. Values guide behavior but the link is complex, depending on reasoning and situational factors. The document also describes models of values, including types that fall under openness to change vs conservation and self-enhancement vs self-transcendence. Finally, it discusses how values differ across cultures, such as individualism vs collectivism and uncertainty avoidance.

1. Individual Behavior,
Personality and Values
HHUMBEHV
M. Aldana 2018 | SHTM Faculty

2. Values in the Workplace

3. Values
 Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that
guide our preferences for outcomes or
courses of action in a variety of situations.
 They are perceptions about what is good or
bad, right or wrong.
 Values tell us what we ought to do.
 They serve as a moral compass that directs
our motivation and, potentially, our decision
and actions.

4. Values
 People arrange values into a hierarchy of
preferences, called a value system.
 Each person’s unique value system is
developed and reinforced through socialization
from parents, religious institutions, friends,
personal experiences and the society in which
he or she lives.

5. Values
 Values that exist within individuals are called personal values.
 Groups of people might hold the same or similar values, so we tend to ascribe
these shared values to the team, department organization, profession, or
entire society.
 Values shared by people throughout an organization are called organizational
values.
 Values that are shared across a society is called cultural values.

6. Values and Personality
 Values tell us what we ought to do, whereas personality traits describe what
we tend to do.
 Personality traits have minimal conflict with each other, whereas some values
are opposed to other values.
 Personality and values are both partly determined by heredity; values are
influenced more by socialization whereas personality traits are more innate.

7. Types of Values

8. Types of Values
 Values comes in many forms, and experts have devoted considerable
attention to organizing them into clusters.
 Milton Rokeach developed two list of values, distinguishing means
(instrumental values) and end goals (terminal values).

9. Types of Values
 Today, the dominant model of personal values is the one developed and
tested by social psychologist Shalom Schwartz and his colleagues.
 Schwartz list of 57 values builds on Rokeach’s earier work but does not
distinguish instrumental from terminal values.
 Instead he organized them into the circular model.
 The model clusters the 57 specific values into 10 broad values categories:
universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, security, power,
achievement, hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction.
 Furthermore, he grouped them into four quadrants: openness to change,
conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence.

10. Types of Values
 Openness to change refers to the extent to
which a person is motivated to pursue
innovative ways.
 The opposing quadrant is conservation, which
is the extent to which a person is motivated to
preserve the status quo.
 The third quadrant is self-enhancement which
refers to how much a person is motivated by
self-interest.
 The opposite is self-transcendence, which
refers to motivation to promote welfare of
others and nature.

11. Values and Individual Behavior
 Personal values guide our decisions and actions to some extent, but this
connection isn’t always as strong as most people believe.
 Habitual behavior tends to be consistent with our values, but our everyday
conscious decisions and actions apply our values much less consistently.
 The main reason for the disconnect between personal values and individual
behavior is that values are abstract concepts, so their relevance to specific
situations is not obvious much of the time.

12. Values and Individual Behavior
 Four conditions strengthen the linkage between personal values and behavior.
 First, we tend to apply our values only when we can think of specific reasons
for doing so. In other words, we need logical reasons for applying a specific
value in a specific situation.
 Second, we tend to apply our values when the situation allows or encourages
us to do so.
 Third, we are more likely to apply values when we actively think about them.
 Finally, we act more consistently with our personal values when we are
literally reminded of them.

13. Values Congruence
 Values congruence refers to how similar a person’s values hierarchy is to the
values of the organization.
 Person-organization value congruence occurs when a person’s values are
similar to the organization’s dominant values.
 This increases the chance that employees will make decisions and act in ways that
are consistent with organizational expectations.
 It also leads to higher job satisfaction, loyalty and organizational citizenship as
well as lower stress and turnover.

14. Values Congruence
 Espoused-enacted value congruence is how consistent
the values apparent in our actions (enacted values) are
with what we say we believe in (espoused values).
 This is important for people in leadership positions
because any obvious gap between espoused and enacted
values undermines their perceived integrity, a critical
feature of effective leaders.
 Organization-community values congruence refers to
the similarity of an organization’s dominant values
with the prevailing values of the community or society
in which it conducts its business.

15. Ethical Values and Behavior
 When asked to identify the most important
attribute of a leader, numerous surveys show
honesty/ethics as the most important
characteristic of effective corporate leaders.
 Ethics refer to the study of moral principles or
values that determine whether actions are
right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.
 People rely on their ethical values to
determine “the right thing to do.”

16. Three Ethical Principles
 Utilitarianism (consequential principle)
 Advises us to seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Focuses on
the consequences of our actions, not on how we achieve those consequences. One
problem is that it is almost impossible to evaluate the benefits or costs of many
decisions, especially when many stakeholders have wide-ranging needs and values.
 Individual rights
 Reflects on the belief that everyone has entitlements that let him or her act in a
certain way.
 Distributive justice
 Suggests that people who are similar to each other should receive similar benefits
and burdens, those who are dissimilar should receive different benefits and
burdens in proportion to their dissimilarity.

17. Four Other Factors that Influence
Ethical Conduct in the Workplace
 Moral Intensity
 The degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles.
Decisions with high moral intensity are more important, so the decision maker
needs to more carefully apply ethical principles to resolve it.
 Ethical Sensitivity
 Is a personal characteristic that enables people to recognize the presence of an
ethical issue and determine its relative importance.
 Situational Influences
 The situation in which the conduct occurs e.g. - Pressure from top management
 Mindlessness
 People don’t think about their actions might be unethical

18. Values Across Cultures

19. Five Cross Cultural Values
 Individualism
 The extent to which we value independence and personal uniqueness.
 High – USA, Chile, Canada, South Africa
 Medium – Japan, Denmark
 Low – Taiwan, Venezuela
 Collectivism
 The extent to which we value our duty to the groups we belong to and group
harmony.
 High – Israel, Taiwan
 Medium – India, Denmark
 Low – USA, Germany, Japan

20. Five Cross Cultural Values
 Power Distance
 the extent to which people accept unequal distribution of power in society.
 High – India, Malaysia
 Medium – USA, Japan
 Low – Denmark, Israel
 Uncertainty Avoidance
 The degree to which people tolerate ambiguity (low uncertainty avoidance) or feel
threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty (high uncertainty avoidance).
 High – Japan, Belgium, Greece
 Medium – USA, Norway
 Low – Denmark, Singapore

21. Five Cross Cultural Values
 Achievement-Nurturing Orientation
 Competitive versus cooperative view or relations with other people.
 People with high achievement orientation value assertiveness, competitiveness and
materialism. They appreciate people who are tough, and they favor the acquisition
of money and material goods.
 People in nurturing oriented cultures emphasize relationships and well-being of
others. They focus on human interaction and caring rather than competition and
personal success.
 High – Austria, Japan
 Medium – USA, Brazil
 Low – Sweden, Netherlands

22. Values Across
Cultures