Corporate Culture

This question posed in a discussion forum made us pause and think:

“Bosses think their firms are caring and “values-driven.” Their minions disagree. I think it’s hard from top-down, policy-driven firms to switch to values-driven because even the values are enforced top-down and bosses who have never listened carefully to their employees don’t suddenly start to do so – thus, they never know if their values have caught on or not. What do you think?”

Firstly we need to define Values – We will use it in this post in its economic sense, such as Economic Value Added, meaning that both value creation, return and risk evaluation is as such is ‘built into the value based system’.

Most corporate managers / leaders would probably understand values in terms of two different contexts:

1. Values as guiding principles, morals, a ‘code to live by’, etc., shaping behaviours and norms
2. Value in…