From Tools to Social Construction of Organizational Reality: Studying Value Dissemination in three Case Companies

Abstract

Values and value management are extremely important nowadays in the companies. As thought, each organization works better when it is constantly kept in mind what is essential. Management`s role in value processing is crucial: they have to show the example to employees by acting due values. In this study the managerial roles in value dissemination and especially the personnel’s experiences about the processes are studied. Being big projects which require a lot of investments from the firm, evaluation of these value processing projects are of importance. The aim of this paper is to study value processing in three different organizations (forest industry, banking and market). The special focus is on the management: what is the role of management in value processing? Data is gathered by interviewing personnel in the head office and at the local level in all three companies with multiple managerial hierarchial levels. The case companies are an international, exchange-rated forest company, a cooperative bank and a cooperative market. In all three companies values were “made” in the head office and then disseminated locally. Each company has their own way of performing the process, and management has central role in this. The aim of this study is to introduce personnel`s experiences about the value process and especially about the managerial roles in value dissemination.