James Drogan

Re Conversations with Dave

In The Value of Corporate Values is seems to me that an important voice is lacking -- that of the employees.  Consider the following paragraph.

"The meaning of this new emphasis on values, however,is less obvious than the trend itself. So to explore how deeply these values are embedded in organizations and to examine the role that values are playing, in 2004 Booz Allen Hamilton and the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan forum focused on values-based leadership and public policy, conducted a global study of corporations in 30 countries and five regions. Senior executives of 365 companies were polled, almost one-third of whom were CEOs or board members. (See “Methodology,” page 13.) The purpose of the survey was to examine the way companies define corporate values, to expand on research about the relationship of values to business performance, and to identify best practices for managing corporate values."

Embedding ought to mean, in this context, that the values guide the behavior of the employees.  They are the only ones who can tell the researchers.

Suppose the following diagram.

The height of the boxes represent the degree to which management believes values are embedded; the width is employees view.  Box A looks like the start of a revolution; box B represents, perhaps, the embedding process; box C represents balance, the desired state.

Booz Allen is a very good company, but I think an important part of the picture was omitted from their report.