Salvador Garcia

Managing by values

The system of beliefs and values that shaped the model for management and organizations during the twentieth century is just not good enough today. In order to keep a business functioning well and competing successfully in markets that are increasingly more global, complex, professionally demanding, constantly changing and oriented towards quality and customer satisfaction a new model is needed. In this paper, we will propose that both management by instructions and management by objectives today give notoriously inadequate results. By contrast, description of a new approach, labeled management by values (MBV), seem to be emerging as a strategic leadership tool. The paper outlines this approach and discusses the implementation of MBV as a tool to redesign culture in organizations and prepare them for the next millennium.

The Logic of Two Different Cultures: Control versus Development

To what extent are the beliefs and values inspiring the organizations of the beginning of the 20th century the same as those persisting today in most companies? What are the new beliefs and values that will inspire the necessary changes in structures, processes and personnel policies so that companies can hold on to their markets and develop new ones in the 21st century? Do we cling to a culture of control, or do we cultivate an environment that fosters development throughout the organization? Ask yourself what is needed, control or development, in order not only to survive, but to thrive.

Managing by Values: Its Foundation and Evolution

The world is seeing a marked shift in management focus. Managers are being held to higher standards of performance as a result of society’s increased demands concerning professional responsibility, quality and customer service. Managers must be able to lead and to facilitate necessary change in order to respond to these expectations. The world has also become a more uncertain and complex place. Managers must also possess the abilities needed to confront continuous and increasing levels of complexity both internal and external to the organization.

Creating a Culture Shift: Roles and Managing Resistance to Change in Your Company

The implementation of MBV involves changing the culture of the company. As we recall in Chapter 1, the Triaxial Model of MBV involves economic-pragmatic values (related to the organizational performance, effectiveness and strategic planning), ethical-social values (related to transparency, respect and honesty) and emotional-developmental values (related to learning and learning flexibility, trust, generating emotions and realizing and releasing potential of organizational members). Creating a culture shift in an organization using MBV is a process embracing these three value sets across levels of an organization, and as with any organizational change process, there are roles and responsibilities critical to the success of implementing cultural change.

Renew or Die: The Importance of Culture Change

Organizational culture develops over a period of time and is largely entrenched in the values embraced by the organization. Ed Schein, a noted scholar on organizational culture from MIT, defines organizational culture as: A pattern of basic assumptions, invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore is to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (1985, p. 9)

The Relationships Between Organization Development (OD) and MBV

Organization development (OD) can be defined as the application of knowledge adapted from the behavioral sciences that inspired the humanist and socio-technical movements. OD interventions are aimed at simultaneously increasing both short and long-term organizational effectiveness by means of improving processes and structures that support individual, group and system advancement. At the heart of OD is a focus on creating a learning environment designed to sustain improvements throughout the organization. As such, OD constitutes the conceptual basis of MBV.

Postscript: An MBV Voyage — Past, Present and Future

MBV was born many years ago. In fact, MBV principles have been used ever since the first human attempts were made to organize work. Nonetheless, the articulation of MBV by us has been sequential and follows a series of internal debates and events based on the respective complementary experiences of the three authors.

Putting MBV into Practice is Not Easy: 24 Likely Problem Areas, and Suggested Answers

In this last chapter we will provide some FAQs (frequently asked questions) and possible answers, on the difficulties of putting MBV into practice. We never said it was going to be easy! As we near the end of our book, we will highlight some of the problem areas, with the following selection of objections, worries and questions taken from practical experience.

Values: But, What Actually Are They?

If you go into any bookstore that specializes in management and enquire about books on values, chances are that you will be sent first to the section on stock markets or to the section on business ethics or ethical investment. However, the relationship between values and business results or share values brings in various interpretations of the word ‘value.’

A Step-by-Step Process for Putting MBV into Practice

As proposed throughout this text, change for the sake of change has never been the philosophy of MBV. Nor does it make sense to consider a culture change just because you may not like the current state of affairs in your company. Every organization has an overriding mission, and MBV must serve that purpose. A company that decides to put MBV into practice, that is to make it a part of the culture, must do so as part of its strategic plan and process.