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.

Interpreting the World-View Shift

The 1988 value system of people in the workforce indicates that people at that time viewed the ‘world of work’ in a rather traditional light:

1. Effective management was most important
2. You get things done through delegation
3. Productivity, making decisions and acting on them, taking responsibility for actions, treating each other with respect, and having the competence and confidence to undertake one’s allocated role - were all key components.

The 1998 value system indicates that the majority of people in the workplace no longer view the world of work this way - there has been a paradigm shift. The amount of energy devoted to control values is approximately half that of 1988, indicating people feel more able to engage in "whatever they want" and "however they want". The energy devoted to ethical values has also dropped significantly since 1988. This reinforces the conclusion that the trend over the decade from 1988 to 1998 was increasingly for people to feel they could, within reason, behave more or less as they choose towards each other. There is little change in the priority placed on developmental values over this decade, however, the overall score on control, ethics and development has dropped substantially. this drop in overall score indicates a trend towards people being less clear as to what they want in life and how to get there (the Generation X?).

The events of September 11, 2001 and subsequent terrorist events, have had a profound impact on people's world-view. This is reflected in the strange attractor for 2003. Until September 11, Australians and New Zealander's placed little to no priority was placed on Territory/Security as a value. After September 11, as Table 1 illustrates, it became the most prominent value in the control dimension.

Today, people are no longer as free to do what and as they please (the score on control values is not quite as high as in 1988, however, it is significantly higher than 1998). Ethical values have become even more important that they were in 1988, indicating a very real concern in Australia and New Zealand for how we treat each other. The fact that human dignity has become the most important value in the ethical values dimension indicates that we now have a priority concern for how humanity in general are treating each other. The higher score on developmental values suggests that people are now devoting much more energy to creatively build a new future for themselves - they are not prepared to sit back and let the future unfold around them. More than ever, people want to be part of creating their own future.

Implications for Managers

Values are people’s motivators. For most people they are unconscious motivators. However, in highly successful organisations, each person in the organisation is aware of their personal values and how they relate to the organisation's value system - in the successful organisation values are conscious motivators. Today, effective managers tap into people’s values as a way of motivating them.

Managers who are still operating from the belief that people still hold the same values they held in 1988 or even prior to September 11, however, will not be effective in motivating their people. The world is in a state of flux and worldviews can change overnight. To function effectively in this turbulent world, today's managers must be able to identify the strange attractor (value system) of their organisation. They must be able to communicate to all in the organisation the key role that values play in organisational success, and they must be able to match their organisational structure and processes to the emergent value system. It is the era of MBV.

References:

Dolan, S. L., Garcia, S., Diegoli, S. & Auerbach, 2003, Organisational Values as "Attractors of Chaos: An Emerging Cultural Change to Manage Organisational Complexity,http://www.minessence.net/html/articles.htm#satt

Prigogine, I. 1986, 'Science, Civilisation and Democracy: Values, Systems, Structures and Affinities', Futures