Organizational Values: Developing a Dormant Concept in Organization Studies

Organizational values were central to some of the foundational ideas of organization and organizing (see, for example, Selznick, 1949, 1957). More recently, values have, tangentially at least, (re)emerged as an important concept across studies of organization, including institutional logics (Thornton et al., 2012), organizational design (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Perkmann & Spicer, 2014), organizational change (Amis et al., 2002; Kraatz et al., 2010), organizational identity (Gioia et al., 2010), and hybrid organizations (Battilana & Lee, 2014). Bourne and Jenkins (2013: 496) argued that “values have a long reach and a wide span of influence on critical processes and characteristics in organizations.&x201D; In line with the conference theme, therefore, values can be seen to, among other things, play the role of interfaces that, on the one hand, create connections between several core organizational elements, and on the other, also create boundaries by acting as a differentiating element within those concepts. However, despite their prominence, values only rarely are the focus of research and are often treated as taken-for-granted concepts that do not require empirical examination. Recent exceptions have focussed on the dynamic nature of organizational values (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013), the emergence of values practices (Gehman, Trevino & Garud, 2013) and the performative power of values to bring about institutional change (Vaccaro & Palazzo, 2015). Following this research, the aim of this symposium is to refocus on values in organizational processes as ends in themselves. The four presenters will explore key questions that individually and collectively not only enhance our understanding of values as core elements in organization studies, but also allow us to theorize the varied roles of values in organization processes and outcomes. To accomplish this, each paper draws on different theoretical lenses and empirical contexts."