Understanding human values: The key to organizational effectiveness

Abstract

The dichotomy faced by management of finding ways to interface theory and technology on the one hand with the idiosyncracies of human behaviour on the other can be likened to the well known concept of Cartesian dualism - the split of the human being into mind and body. In any organization management is faced by the same problem. Implementation of sound rational ideas is often obfuscated by the apparently irrational human element. This article attempts to find this 'missing link' in the chain between the mind and body of the organization, through an analysis of human values and their influence on personal, interpersonal and organizational behaviour. Several hypotheses relating values to organizational behaviour are considered and a preliminary empirical study undertaken to test these hypotheses is discussed.