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.

The dialogue between our control values and our developmental values is mediated by our ethical values. The mediated dialogue creates our culture (personal - i.e. personality, organisational or societal).

Transactional leaders will have a preference for control values and visionary leaders will have a preference for developmental values. The two groups of leaders, through dialogue mediated by their shared ethical values, creates transformational leadership as an emergent property of the synergy between them. 

The arrow of progress/growth for any living system (person, team, organisation, society, etc) is always towards increased internal complexity (refer previous slides). Our research using the repertory grid has indicated that people's mental models in relation to progress also have an expectation that the internal complexity will be employed in making it easier to relate to the person, organisation, etc. In other words, there is an expectation that one of the outcomes  of growth is that the increased sophistication of a person or organisation carries with it a responsibility that they should be easier to deal with.  Just as with human created technology. DVD players are much more complex internally than video players, and video players were much more complex internally than movie projectors. However, DVD players are easier to use than video players, and movie projectors often required a professional projectionist.

My assertion, therefore, based on this overview of values-based personal/organisational growth, is that the arrow of progress is increased internal complexity with a commensurate increase in ease of interface with the entity. This then forms the basis of a key principle to inform Managerial, HR and Social Policy.

Chippendale, P. 2004, A Values Inventory for Leadership Development, The Minessence Group, Brisbane.

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/Articles/valuesasAttractors.pdf