Autor(es):
Marques, Carlos Alberto Alves 
Data: 1991
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/1655
Origem: Repositório do ISPA - Instituto Universitário
Detalhes do Documento
Value analysis in organizational context
Descrição
Tese de doutoramento apresentada à Universidade de Brabant, Tilburg In the last two decades there has been a significant development of organizational culture theories inside organizational psychology, which have been largely divulged among managers who have adopted them in their everyday language. Inside those theories one concept occupies a "central role": the concept of value (v.g. Jones, 1983; Smircish, 1983; Schein, 1985). In this book we present a study looking for the role of values inside the organization empirically, Two main goals have guided this research: 1 - The culture producing effect of organizations on values. Corporate culture models state that each organization and its management can induce its own specific organizational culture and consequently its own specific value systems. In this research, it is empirically tested if different enterprises are related with different value systems and if this relationship is stronger than the one established between value systems and Portuguese regions. 2 - The effects of values on perceptions and emotional and behavioral outputs. Several theoretical ftameworks state that values influence the perceptions and the emotional and behavioral outputs of individuais. This statement is empirically tested in an organizational context. Reviewing the literature on values, from philosophy to economics, one can easily observe that different concepts are used in the different fields, which may lead to some difficulties in their study and several misunderstandings. Anyway, the anthropological conception of value (Kluckhohn, 1951) seems dominant in most of the works: its influence is capital in the whole of social and organizational psychology (e.g. Rokeach, 1973 and Schein, 1986). But although the anthropological conception is the broader framework and the common departure point for most psychologists, the latter, when building their theories and operationalizations, arrive at completely different conceptions and instruments. Among these conceptions, two typical ones are very often used: the one of Schein (1986), - "Values are what 'ought' or 'should' be" - , which is more connected with the concept of social norm generally used in social psychology; and the one of Kluckhohn (1951), - "Value is a conception of the desirable that influences the ways people select actíon and evaluate events" -, which is the conception generally adopted in social psychology (v.g. Rokeach, 1973, Howard et al. 1983, Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987). In this study we adopt the latter definition. Within the scope of this defínition it is possible to distinguish various levels of abstraction. Given our organizational interests, we look at two levels of values: a) General and abstract values, - what is desirable and important in people's life in a general way - ; and b) Work related values, - what is desirable and important for people in work, these latter being conceived as a specific domain, í.e. an "area of behavior that is aimed at the same goal" (Vinson et ai. 1977 and Verhallen et ai. 1989). On the first level we adopt the Rokeach Model (Rokeach, 1973) and, on the second level, we have as reference the MOW Model (MOW, 1987). In order to accomplish the first goal of this study, we identified several possible antecedents of values on.both levels. Matching the corporate culture models with the comparative management models, our main interest is centered on the possible influences of enterprises and Portuguese regions on value systems. Beyond these possible effects, we also control personal characteristics, such as education, sex and age, which have been shown to influence values in previous studies (v.g. Rokeach, 1973, 1979; Feather, 1975; Buchhoiz, 1978; MOW, 1987) and the individual history inside the organízations, in regard to which we adopt several indices imported from socialization models (v.g. Van Maanen and Schein, 1979), such as career evolution, seniority, training and supervision. Ali the antecedents are treated on the same level of causality. 179 -CA As we intended to analyse the relationships between values and job/organizational perceptions and emotional and behavioral outputs (second goal), we constructed a heuristic model, where general values play a central cognitive role influencing work related values, job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs. These last ones are conceived as being also influenced by world values and organizational perceptions, Nevertheless, the model is conceived as a reciprocal causality one. In the absence of a global operationalized model of organizations, in this study the concepts and operationalizations used in the job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs are largely based on a revision oí the Hackman and Oldham Model (1980) about job design and on its further developments by Cammmann et al. (1983). In this context, we decided to distinguish between four general leveis of analysis within job/organizational perception: job and role characteristics, group perception, rewards perception and organizational perception. As individual outputs, we consider job . satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitement and extra-hours at work. The relationships between job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs are conceived according to the postcognitive-nonreairsive model (v.g. Lazarus, 1982, 1984, James and Tetrick, 1986), i,e. even if reciprocally related job perceptions are the first cause of emotional answers, e,g. satisfaction. To attain our goals we decided to use a large survey. But before building it we conducted a pilot-study, based on 20 semi-directive interviews looking for specific values in Portugal and possible subjective impressions of change in value systems during the individual's organizational life. Data analysis showed that the general values brought up by the interviewees can be located in Rokeach's terminal and instrumental value systems, showing once again (see Rokeach 1973,1979, Feather, 1975, Ng et al., 1982, Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987) the rather universal character of these systems. The analysis of the work related values, suggested by the Portuguese sample, showed that the majority of them can be placed in the work related value system proposed by the MOW Team (1987). However a new work related value appeared in a very significant way: To attain goals/results", suggesting a strong intrinsic work motivation in the Portuguese population, so that we included it in our scale. About value changes, there was a near consensus about their evolution during the period after the admission to the organization, white this evolution was attributed to friends and colleagues, Nevertheless, the individuais had some difficulties in indicating which values had become more or less important in that period. Once constructed, the survey was applied to two Portuguese enterprises (N = 452) with different activities and characteristics but each one with identical structures, procedures and jobs in the three Portuguese regions considered. With this design, we intended to control the effects of the enterprises on the values in contrast with the effects of the regions. Comparing the two enterprises, enterprise 1 (N = 195) is big, with a stable environment, consisting of blue and white collar workers and managed like a public service, while enterprise 2 (N = 257) is smaller, with a strong competitive environment, comprising only white collar workers and managed like a private company. In the latter there is less absenteeism, a higher productivity, a higher average remuneration and promotions based on individual appraisals (in El promotions are mainly based on automatisms). The three Portuguese regions include the most developed (Lisboa) and one of the most underdeveloped of Portugal (Évora). Given the large number of variables in our survey and to avoid too complex patterns difficult to interpret, we use principal component analysis on all logical groups of variables. Thus, with the general values we got five factors explaining 35 percent of the variance. The last four factors found show a strong convergence with the factors found in previous researches (Rokeach, 1973 and Howard et ai. 1983), which induced us to name them in the same way: competence -versus-morality, self-constriction -versus- self-expression, personal/emotional -versus- social oriented and delayed -versus- immediate gratification. Only factor 1: non-conflict -versus- enlarger seems more specific to our sample, although the enlarger pole is quite similar to the one found by Howard et al .(1983) with American and Japanese managers. 180 In regard to work related values, 5 factors were identified, explaining 54 percent of the variance, with some similarities with the MOW Team findings (1987), but also with some specific differences. Nevertheless, we discovered that adopting the same kind of ranking/rating scale used by the MOW Team had not been a good choice: during collecting data some respondents showed some doubts about how to answer (which had not happened during the pre-test) and once the data plotting was done we got a distribution that could have been influenced by chance. After analysing the logical relationships between general and work related values the factor chance was excluded, but we are careful with the interpretations related to work related values. For principal component analysis, the job/organizational perceptions were grouped into 8 categories: job/role perceptions, work group functioning, supervision, reward systems, structure perception, procedures, norms and perception of the organization as a whole. For each new scale, reliabilities are offered. The same is done in regard to the scales of the individual outputs. In a first approach, we tested the differences in values between enterprises and between regions. From this analysis, it is possible to conclude that each enterprise is dominated by rather different general and work related values, while the three Portuguese regions have a small effect on values systems. While one of the enterprises is oriented to values such as: non-conflict, morality, social values and comfort; the other is oriented to: enlarger, competence, expressive characteristics of work and To attain goals/results". Apparently, each enterprise had generated its value systems, its own corporate culture. However, after we analysed all considered antecedents of value systems, we found that, at a general values level, the differences are mainly influenced by the personal characteristics (age, sex and education), Enterprise, region and individual organizational history have a weak influence on general values. On the other hand, at a work related values level, enterprise shows a constant and significant impact, by itself or associated with individual organizational history (e.g. seniority and training). Nevertheless, it is not possible to assume that this relationship results from a socializing process. The variables used as indices of socialization (promotion, training and seniority) appear mainly related with development/utility work related values (serve society, to attain goals/results and learn new things). In the enterprise managed like a public service, comfort and economic rewards are preferred, while, in comparison, development/utility are preferred in the enterprise managed like a private company. Thus, our data tend to confirm the enduring character of general values foreseen by Rokeach (1973), i.e. the individuals tend to keep their own values towards life, independently of the type of organization where they work (further research is needed with more and different kinds of organization). However, work related values, being more concrete and a specific domain connected with organizational activities, are influenced a great deal by different enterprises. Because the data happened to be available, we also analysed in an exploratory sense the antecedents on job/organizational perceptions mentioned before. Among the personal characteristics: education confirms the strong impact on those perceptions, inducing, when present, a systematic negative effect; while age shows a positive effect and sex shows weak or absent relationships. Among individual organizational history: seniority is only present in the regression equations when age is also present, which is certainly related with the strong correlation between them (.88), nevertheless, while age produces a positive effect, seniority shows a systematic negative effect; training does not appear very related with organizational perception, however when present it shows a positive relationship, in opposition to education; promotion has only expected relationships with rewards perception. When considered on its own, supervision has quite a reduced relationship with organizational perception, nevertheless when in interaction with individual organizational history the number of relationships increase significantly. The effects of enterprise on job/organizational perceptions were rather expected according to enterprise characteristics. But the same did not happen with region. It shows quite an influence on perceptions. 181 where some of these influences produced by the Porto region are unexpected according to region and enterprise characteristics. Employees from both enterprises in Porto, which in public opinion is regarded as the "capital of work", are, for instance, more demanding towards the supportive and production orientation of their supervisors. As the Porto region is not related with specific values, the effects on perceptions seem to have to be interpreted in a cultural framework related with social norms. More research is needed to explain these specificities of Porto culture. The relationships found between general and work related values confirm theoretical expectations (Rokeach, 1973 and Vinson et al. 1977) and empirical data from the field of consumer psychology (Verhallen et ai., 1989): general and specific domain values are logically and consistently related but not in a one-to-one correspondance. For instance, while morality general values are related with comfort work related values, competence general values are connected with expressive characteristics, economic rewards and development/utility work related values. General and work related values do not establish strong relationships with job/organizational perceptions. Nevertheless, the latter are not independent from values. As theoretically expected (James and Jones, 1989), these relationships tend to improve from descriptive perceptions to evaluative ones. General values found more related with organizational perceptions are: self-expansion -vs- self-constriction and morality -vs- competence. Work related values found more related with organizational perceptions are: comfort I (environmental) and economic rewards. General and work related values show moderate relationships with individual organizational outputs, where those that are established with affective outputs are stronger than those established with the declared behavioral output. Morality, self-constriction and social oriented employees systematically show a more positive reaction towards the job and the organization. Enlarger oriented employees are more organizational committed and give more extra-time to the enterprise. Among work related values, development/utility values have a positive relationship with job involvement, organizational commitment and extra-time; while economic rewards and comfort II show negative relationships with job involvement and organizational commitment. Probably, as a result of the scale used work related values are less related with individual outputs than general values. As theoretically expected, job and organizational perceptions are better able to explain the variance of job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment and extra-time at work than values. And also as expected organizational levels nearer everyday life of the employees have more impact on individual outputs: job perception, group functioning perceptions and reward systems. Our results about the effects of enterprise on general and work related values indicate that to use the concept of value, in its more traditional sense in Social Sciences - as "a conception of the desirable" -, can not be done so arbitrarily and simply as is generally done. General values do not seem quite influence by enterprise (at least bureaucratic ones) and, thus, they can not be included in the framework of corporate culture. On the other hand, work related values are influenced by enterprise, i.e. they can be considered a dimension of corporate culture, but they are conditioned by the "enduring" general values which, in this way, put limits to some developments of corporate culture. Le. the enterprise seems to be able to influence employees values related to its activities if they fit in general values but it cannot manipulate their values towards general life. Managers ignoring this statement can be very disappointed with their cultural management.
Tese de doutoramento apresentada à Universidade de Brabant, Tilburg In the last two decades there has been a significant development of organizational culture theories inside organizational psychology, which have been largely divulged among managers who have adopted them in their everyday language. Inside those theories one concept occupies a "central role": the concept of value (v.g. Jones, 1983; Smircish, 1983; Schein, 1985). In this book we present a study looking for the role of values inside the organization empirically, Two main goals have guided this research: 1 - The culture producing effect of organizations on values. Corporate culture models state that each organization and its management can induce its own specific organizational culture and consequently its own specific value systems. In this research, it is empirically tested if different enterprises are related with different value systems and if this relationship is stronger than the one established between value systems and Portuguese regions. 2 - The effects of values on perceptions and emotional and behavioral outputs. Several theoretical ftameworks state that values influence the perceptions and the emotional and behavioral outputs of individuais. This statement is empirically tested in an organizational context. Reviewing the literature on values, from philosophy to economics, one can easily observe that different concepts are used in the different fields, which may lead to some difficulties in their study and several misunderstandings. Anyway, the anthropological conception of value (Kluckhohn, 1951) seems dominant in most of the works: its influence is capital in the whole of social and organizational psychology (e.g. Rokeach, 1973 and Schein, 1986). But although the anthropological conception is the broader framework and the common departure point for most psychologists, the latter, when building their theories and operationalizations, arrive at completely different conceptions and instruments. Among these conceptions, two typical ones are very often used: the one of Schein (1986), - "Values are what 'ought' or 'should' be" - , which is more connected with the concept of social norm generally used in social psychology; and the one of Kluckhohn (1951), - "Value is a conception of the desirable that influences the ways people select actíon and evaluate events" -, which is the conception generally adopted in social psychology (v.g. Rokeach, 1973, Howard et al. 1983, Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987). In this study we adopt the latter definition. Within the scope of this defínition it is possible to distinguish various levels of abstraction. Given our organizational interests, we look at two levels of values: a) General and abstract values, - what is desirable and important in people's life in a general way - ; and b) Work related values, - what is desirable and important for people in work, these latter being conceived as a specific domain, í.e. an "area of behavior that is aimed at the same goal" (Vinson et ai. 1977 and Verhallen et ai. 1989). On the first level we adopt the Rokeach Model (Rokeach, 1973) and, on the second level, we have as reference the MOW Model (MOW, 1987). In order to accomplish the first goal of this study, we identified several possible antecedents of values on.both levels. Matching the corporate culture models with the comparative management models, our main interest is centered on the possible influences of enterprises and Portuguese regions on value systems. Beyond these possible effects, we also control personal characteristics, such as education, sex and age, which have been shown to influence values in previous studies (v.g. Rokeach, 1973, 1979; Feather, 1975; Buchhoiz, 1978; MOW, 1987) and the individual history inside the organízations, in regard to which we adopt several indices imported from socialization models (v.g. Van Maanen and Schein, 1979), such as career evolution, seniority, training and supervision. Ali the antecedents are treated on the same level of causality. 179 -CA As we intended to analyse the relationships between values and job/organizational perceptions and emotional and behavioral outputs (second goal), we constructed a heuristic model, where general values play a central cognitive role influencing work related values, job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs. These last ones are conceived as being also influenced by world values and organizational perceptions, Nevertheless, the model is conceived as a reciprocal causality one. In the absence of a global operationalized model of organizations, in this study the concepts and operationalizations used in the job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs are largely based on a revision oí the Hackman and Oldham Model (1980) about job design and on its further developments by Cammmann et al. (1983). In this context, we decided to distinguish between four general leveis of analysis within job/organizational perception: job and role characteristics, group perception, rewards perception and organizational perception. As individual outputs, we consider job . satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitement and extra-hours at work. The relationships between job/organizational perceptions and individual outputs are conceived according to the postcognitive-nonreairsive model (v.g. Lazarus, 1982, 1984, James and Tetrick, 1986), i,e. even if reciprocally related job perceptions are the first cause of emotional answers, e,g. satisfaction. To attain our goals we decided to use a large survey. But before building it we conducted a pilot-study, based on 20 semi-directive interviews looking for specific values in Portugal and possible subjective impressions of change in value systems during the individual's organizational life. Data analysis showed that the general values brought up by the interviewees can be located in Rokeach's terminal and instrumental value systems, showing once again (see Rokeach 1973,1979, Feather, 1975, Ng et al., 1982, Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987) the rather universal character of these systems. The analysis of the work related values, suggested by the Portuguese sample, showed that the majority of them can be placed in the work related value system proposed by the MOW Team (1987). However a new work related value appeared in a very significant way: To attain goals/results", suggesting a strong intrinsic work motivation in the Portuguese population, so that we included it in our scale. About value changes, there was a near consensus about their evolution during the period after the admission to the organization, white this evolution was attributed to friends and colleagues, Nevertheless, the individuais had some difficulties in indicating which values had become more or less important in that period. Once constructed, the survey was applied to two Portuguese enterprises (N = 452) with different activities and characteristics but each one with identical structures, procedures and jobs in the three Portuguese regions considered. With this design, we intended to control the effects of the enterprises on the values in contrast with the effects of the regions. Comparing the two enterprises, enterprise 1 (N = 195) is big, with a stable environment, consisting of blue and white collar workers and managed like a public service, while enterprise 2 (N = 257) is smaller, with a strong competitive environment, comprising only white collar workers and managed like a private company. In the latter there is less absenteeism, a higher productivity, a higher average remuneration and promotions based on individual appraisals (in El promotions are mainly based on automatisms). The three Portuguese regions include the most developed (Lisboa) and one of the most underdeveloped of Portugal (Évora). Given the large number of variables in our survey and to avoid too complex patterns difficult to interpret, we use principal component analysis on all logical groups of variables. Thus, with the general values we got five factors explaining 35 percent of the variance. The last four factors found show a strong convergence with the factors found in previous researches (Rokeach, 1973 and Howard et ai. 1983), which induced us to name them in the same way: competence -versus-morality, self-constriction -versus- self-expression, personal/emotional -versus- social oriented and delayed -versus- immediate gratification. Only factor 1: non-conflict -versus- enlarger seems more specific to our sample, although the enlarger pole is quite similar to the one found by Howard et al .(1983) with American and Japanese managers. 180 In regard to work related values, 5 factors were identified, explaining 54 percent of the variance, with some similarities with the MOW Team findings (1987), but also with some specific differences. Nevertheless, we discovered that adopting the same kind of ranking/rating scale used by the MOW Team had not been a good choice: during collecting data some respondents showed some doubts about how to answer (which had not happened during the pre-test) and once the data plotting was done we got a distribution that could have been influenced by chance. After analysing the logical relationships between general and work related values the factor chance was excluded, but we are careful with the interpretations related to work related values. For principal component analysis, the job/organizational perceptions were grouped into 8 categories: job/role perceptions, work group functioning, supervision, reward systems, structure perception, procedures, norms and perception of the organization as a whole. For each new scale, reliabilities are offered. The same is done in regard to the scales of the individual outputs. In a first approach, we tested the differences in values between enterprises and between regions. From this analysis, it is possible to conclude that each enterprise is dominated by rather different general and work related values, while the three Portuguese regions have a small effect on values systems. While one of the enterprises is oriented to values such as: non-conflict, morality, social values and comfort; the other is oriented to: enlarger, competence, expressive characteristics of work and To attain goals/results". Apparently, each enterprise had generated its value systems, its own corporate culture. However, after we analysed all considered antecedents of value systems, we found that, at a general values level, the differences are mainly influenced by the personal characteristics (age, sex and education), Enterprise, region and individual organizational history have a weak influence on general values. On the other hand, at a work related values level, enterprise shows a constant and significant impact, by itself or associated with individual organizational history (e.g. seniority and training). Nevertheless, it is not possible to assume that this relationship results from a socializing process. The variables used as indices of socialization (promotion, training and seniority) appear mainly related with development/utility work related values (serve society, to attain goals/results and learn new things). In the enterprise managed like a public service, comfort and economic rewards are preferred, while, in comparison, development/utility are preferred in the enterprise managed like a private company. Thus, our data tend to confirm the enduring character of general values foreseen by Rokeach (1973), i.e. the individuals tend to keep their own values towards life, independently of the type of organization where they work (further research is needed with more and different kinds of organization). However, work related values, being more concrete and a specific domain connected with organizational activities, are influenced a great deal by different enterprises. Because the data happened to be available, we also analysed in an exploratory sense the antecedents on job/organizational perceptions mentioned before. Among the personal characteristics: education confirms the strong impact on those perceptions, inducing, when present, a systematic negative effect; while age shows a positive effect and sex shows weak or absent relationships. Among individual organizational history: seniority is only present in the regression equations when age is also present, which is certainly related with the strong correlation between them (.88), nevertheless, while age produces a positive effect, seniority shows a systematic negative effect; training does not appear very related with organizational perception, however when present it shows a positive relationship, in opposition to education; promotion has only expected relationships with rewards perception. When considered on its own, supervision has quite a reduced relationship with organizational perception, nevertheless when in interaction with individual organizational history the number of relationships increase significantly. The effects of enterprise on job/organizational perceptions were rather expected according to enterprise characteristics. But the same did not happen with region. It shows quite an influence on perceptions. 181 where some of these influences produced by the Porto region are unexpected according to region and enterprise characteristics. Employees from both enterprises in Porto, which in public opinion is regarded as the "capital of work", are, for instance, more demanding towards the supportive and production orientation of their supervisors. As the Porto region is not related with specific values, the effects on perceptions seem to have to be interpreted in a cultural framework related with social norms. More research is needed to explain these specificities of Porto culture. The relationships found between general and work related values confirm theoretical expectations (Rokeach, 1973 and Vinson et al. 1977) and empirical data from the field of consumer psychology (Verhallen et ai., 1989): general and specific domain values are logically and consistently related but not in a one-to-one correspondance. For instance, while morality general values are related with comfort work related values, competence general values are connected with expressive characteristics, economic rewards and development/utility work related values. General and work related values do not establish strong relationships with job/organizational perceptions. Nevertheless, the latter are not independent from values. As theoretically expected (James and Jones, 1989), these relationships tend to improve from descriptive perceptions to evaluative ones. General values found more related with organizational perceptions are: self-expansion -vs- self-constriction and morality -vs- competence. Work related values found more related with organizational perceptions are: comfort I (environmental) and economic rewards. General and work related values show moderate relationships with individual organizational outputs, where those that are established with affective outputs are stronger than those established with the declared behavioral output. Morality, self-constriction and social oriented employees systematically show a more positive reaction towards the job and the organization. Enlarger oriented employees are more organizational committed and give more extra-time to the enterprise. Among work related values, development/utility values have a positive relationship with job involvement, organizational commitment and extra-time; while economic rewards and comfort II show negative relationships with job involvement and organizational commitment. Probably, as a result of the scale used work related values are less related with individual outputs than general values. As theoretically expected, job and organizational perceptions are better able to explain the variance of job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment and extra-time at work than values. And also as expected organizational levels nearer everyday life of the employees have more impact on individual outputs: job perception, group functioning perceptions and reward systems. Our results about the effects of enterprise on general and work related values indicate that to use the concept of value, in its more traditional sense in Social Sciences - as "a conception of the desirable" -, can not be done so arbitrarily and simply as is generally done. General values do not seem quite influence by enterprise (at least bureaucratic ones) and, thus, they can not be included in the framework of corporate culture. On the other hand, work related values are influenced by enterprise, i.e. they can be considered a dimension of corporate culture, but they are conditioned by the "enduring" general values which, in this way, put limits to some developments of corporate culture. Le. the enterprise seems to be able to influence employees values related to its activities if they fit in general values but it cannot manipulate their values towards general life. Managers ignoring this statement can be very disappointed with their cultural management.
Tipo de Documento
Tese de Doutoramento
Idioma Inglês
Orientador(es) Rijsman, J. B.
Idioma Inglês
Orientador(es) Rijsman, J. B.
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