MBV - Management By Values

Whereas values were once considered by managers as 'too soft' to be included in any serious approach to management, they have now become a central part of mainstream management. Figure 1 below illustrates this shift of focus.

FIGURE 1 - Shift in Management Focus

This shift in management focus has been brought about through society's increased demands on managers in respect of professional responsibility, quality and customer focus. The world has also become a much more uncertain and complex place. Managers can no longer avoid dealing with complexity. Instead there has become an urgent need for managers to confront complexity head on with new skills acquired through an understanding of complexity theory, chaos theory, systems theory, etc. It is now understood that the arrow of progress and growth of any entity (person, organisation, society), is NOT bigger, richer, taller, faster, etc. rather, the arrow of progress and growth IS increased internal complexity with a commensurate simplification of interface between entities - if internal complexity and interface simplicity are not increasing, then the 'management alarm bells' should be ringing!

As Figure 1 shows, in the 1920s it was sufficient to manage by instruction (MBI) as change was not rapid and the way things were done in the past worked well enough to pass on to others. By the 1960s, change was accelerating to the point where more flexibility of action was required by managers. The introduction of management by objectives (MBO) enabled managers to agree on direction and to choose their own strategy. In 1986, Prigogine put forward the notion that an analysis of the value systems of complex living entities was the key to understanding their behaviour. Years of research since has confirmed that value systems are indeed the key to understanding the behaviour of individuals, organisations and society, leading, today to the emergence of management by values (MBV).

In simple non-living human-made linear entities such as machines, bridges, buildings, etc. their motion (behaviour) can be understood through forces and simple attractors such as gravity. One can, through using a few mathematical equations, predict with a fair degree of accuracy, the behaviour of these entities in a whole range of possible environments. Not so with complex living entities. However, in this later case, a strange attractor, in lieu of a simple attractor, can be used to understand the general form of behaviour - to predict with a high level of certainty what the entity will do at any moment is simply impossible.

For individuals, groups, organisations and society, value systems are the strange attractor that determines the general form of their behaviour. One way of using this strange attractor to analyse the likely general form of human behaviour is to separate the value system into three dimensions: control values, ethical values, and developmental values.

Control values are necessary to maintain and bring together various organisational sub-systems. They include values relating to efficiency, discipline, and performance standards. These values guide such activities as planning, quality assurance and accounting.

The way people behave in a group setting is guided be the Ethical values the group's members share. Ethical values emerge from beliefs held about how people should conduct themselves in public, at work and in relationships. They are associated with social values such as honesty, congruence, respect, and loyalty. A person's ethical values will influence how they behave when living their personal Control and Developmental values.

Developmental values are essential to create new opportunities for action. They are values related to trust, creativity, freedom and having fun in the workplace. Examples of developmental values are creativity/ideation, life/self-actualisation, self-assertion/directedness, and adaptability/flexibility.

Paul Chippendale's research identifies a significant world-view shift of the Australian and New Zealand workforce between 1988 and 2003. This shift is illustrated, in Table 1, using the strange attractor (value system) in operation in 1988, 1998 and 2003.