Balancing Individual and Organizational Values: Walking the Tightrope to Success

Citation

Banwell, E. (2003), "Balancing Individual and Organizational Values: Walking the Tightrope to Success", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 697-700. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810310502621

After reading Hultman's book, Balancing Individual and Organizational Values: Walking the Tightrope to Success, I found myself humming the Monkee's 1966 hit, I'm a Believer. As a newcomer to the field of organization development (OD), I believe Hultman does a masterful job of bridging the generation gap between organization development practitioners who developed their practices during the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and those who entered the field in more bottom‐line oriented times by presenting a convincing case in support of the field's emphasis on humanistic “growth” values as the only way to improve organizational effectiveness. His message is strong: if OD practitioners and organizations do not align individual and organization values, and more specifically, if they do not foster the field's founding values of human development, fairness, openness, choice, and balance between autonomy and constraint, they will not succeed.

Until quite recently, I fit Hultman's definition of the new generation of OD practitioners, concerned first and foremost with a traditional management consulting approach to OD, unclear how a values and people‐centered focus could improve organizational effectiveness. While my background is in non‐profit organizations and foundations, I entered the OD field viewing organizations as mechanistic rather than human systems. About ten years ago, the “business” bug bit the non‐profit sector, and the push to make non‐profits and foundations operate more efficiently began. The trend spawned a great deal of useful research and discussion about the importance of investing in and building the capacity of non‐profits. The emphasis on effectiveness helped strengthen many organizations by introducing and emphasizing useful business practices. In the process, though, I have noticed a growing divide that parallels the gap Hultman describes in the OD movement between those who believe organization change and capacity building is ultimately the result of personal growth and those who ignore the human element and believe change is a rational process, made possible with the right information and tools.

In his very rich and practical book, Hultman accomplishes a lot more than quieting the “No, People! No, financial gain!” debate. He deconstructs the complex dynamics of values and motivation to reveal the pivotal role values play in personality and organizational culture. He does not stop there. Although the concepts he works with are multi‐dimensional and abstract, Hultman includes the Motivational System Model (MSM) – a concrete way to visualize how the complexities of values and motivation play out in a whole system – at the personal, interpersonal, team and organization levels. He also provides four criteria for assessing values, including balance, viability, alignment and authenticity. In addition, he includes eight clearly outlined exercises for practitioners to use with systems that integrate personal growth with organizational growth.

Hultman's argument is tight and clear – captured in the title of his book and reinforced throughout: “Effective culture is one that successfully balances individual and organizational values, that is, walking the tightrope to success” (p. 87). Drawing on research, he builds credibility by citing findings that reveal that profits are higher when individual and organizational values are aligned. He also makes a convincing case for the pivotal role that values play in organizational success and failure. He writes that many organizational problems can be traced back to people's values (p. 43). He adds, “The reason many OD activities fail is that the consultants are blind to an organization's prevailing values and are therefore unsuccessful in having a significant impact on them” (p. 80).

Drawing on Maslow's theory, Hultman writes that values perform three functions for individuals and organizations – to defend against perceived threats (defensive values), to adjust to society (stabilizing values), and to foster movement toward self‐actualization (growth values). While he believes that all these values are essential, he clearly makes a case for creating conditions that support “growth values.” Specifically, he makes a plea for practitioners and organizations to foster 15 growth values he believes are particularly relevant for success in this current business climate of global competition and instant communication. They also happen to be humanistic values that foster wholeness and integration. Those values include self‐directed learning, adapting to change, balance, seeking opportunities in the midst of uncertainty, utilizing ability, distributing rewards fairly, finding satisfaction in work, serving mutual interests, working as an owner, prizing wisdom, being authentic, seeking truth, celebrating differences, accepting people and viewing people as ends in themselves.

Hultman's book is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on understanding values; part two, on assessing and changing values. Ironically, taken as a concept, values are value‐free – neither good nor bad, right nor wrong – whatever they may be. Values represent a fundamental dilemma of the human condition: the need for safety and the need to grow. They are, as Hultman describes, beliefs about what is important. Their primary function is to meet needs, and every action is guided by one or more values. And, it is here – in this nugget of truth – where values are a tremendous benefit to organizations and OD practitioners. Because values are the criteria individuals and organizations use to make decisions and set priorities, individual values shape organization behavior and the direction of organizations, and therefore are key to organization change.

Hultman takes his argument deeper into the human psyche, and then ties the dynamics of individual motivation to organizational effectiveness. The key components of individual, interpersonal, team, organizational motivation, outlined in his motivational system model, are wants, needs, feelings, beliefs about self, others and the external world, valuing, deciding and doing. Hultman's clincher is: “I contend that the particular values people choose depend largely on two factors: the degree to which they accept themselves unconditionally and the extent to which they trust others” (p. 23). That said, Hultman shows how vital an individual's self worth is to his or her competence and ethics, and by extension then, how important each person's self esteem ultimately is for organizational effectiveness. “Defensive values, and the negative conceptions of self and others behind them, are almost always causal factors in personal, interpersonal, team and organizational problems, so a thorough understanding of their dynamics is crucial for OD practitioners and managers“ (p. 55).

By showing how one's self‐concept is tied to the drive for greatness (individual and social competence) and the drive for goodness (individual and social integrity), Hultman makes the connection to terminal values and instrumental values. Drawing on Rokeach, Hultman explains that terminal values serve as our visions – our preferred end states of existence. Instrumental values are the equivalent of our missions – or preferred modes of conduct. He adds that terminal values comprise the visions of teams and organizations as well as individuals, and that the same connection is true of team and organizational missions and instrumental values. Because values are integral to personal, team and organizational visions, aligning values of organizations and individuals leads to greater motivation and ultimately success.

However, aligning individual and organizational values is no easy matter. According to Hultman, individuals have 30‐40 instrumental values they draw upon as they pursue their terminal values. By extension, if you consider all the values operating in an organization at a given time, aligning individual values with organizational values is a challenging endeavor to say the least. The seemingly unlimited number of values at play when a group of people comes together is yet another reason why Hultman emphasizes his 15 growth values. If self‐actualization and fulfilling one's potential is the deepest desire of each person, as the founders of the OD field argue and, if growth values are what organizations must embrace to be successful in the current economy, as Hultman argues, then organizations and practitioners will only succeed by fostering growth values.

If I have any criticism of this book, it is that the whole subject of values is inherently slippery. In the same way it is impossible to have a clear picture of one's personality, it is equally challenging to objectify and honestly articulate one's own actual values. (Stating one's espoused and a desired values is another matter entirely – and largely based on one's ideal self rather than one's actual behavior in the day‐to‐day.) All in all, I found this book both engaging and useful and its argument on behalf of humanistic values inherently worthwhile to pursue. I plan to refer to this book many times as I begin to work with a domestic violence agency whose director intuitively understands that her organization's survival during this time of deep cuts to state and federal funding depends on changing the organization's culture, and that the key to change is providing opportunities for her staff to strengthen their own personal visions, missions and self concepts. Now, thanks to Hultman, I am a believer, too.