Introduction

After some generalities about the concept of value, this article discusses it through the three notable studies of Louis Lavelle, Milton Rockach, and Shalom Schwartz. Values need to be contrasted with other important characteristics, notably the social behavior one for understanding their expression and development.

Generalities

Values are personal beliefs and principles that individuals see as important, whether at work or in broader issues related to society, religion, politics, day-to-day existence, and life. In organizations, values shape what feels worthwhile, desirable, and right. As a result, they influence a person's attitudes, behaviors, and decisions. Values are said to be normative, setting some standards of what’s appropriate and desirable. Some define values as an internal compass that helps people navigate the world in a way that feels authentic to the person.

Louis Lavelle

Louis Lavelle is one of the precursors who worked on values in the 1950s. His treatise on values grounds his understanding of values in the relationship between individual consciousness and Absolute Being. Lavelle posits that values are realized through conscious acts of participation in the Absolute and are organized in a hierarchy with love as the highest spiritual value. The word value "applies whenever we are dealing with a rupture of indifference or equality between things, wherever one of them must be put before another or above another, wherever it is judged superior and deserves to be preferred”. Lavelle identifies six levels of consciousness:

Bodily sensation, Affectivity, Sensitivity, Intelligence, Will, and Spirit

Through these functions, people fully develop their lives as human beings. Without these functions, the universe would be indistinct. There would be no perception of separation between us and the world, and everything in it would be the same. Each of these levels of consciousness corresponds to a specific way of entering into contact with the world. The typology presented by Lavelle includes seven sets of values , which are as follows:

Economic, Affective, Aesthetic, Intellectual, Moral, Social, Spiritual

The criterion proposed by Lavelle for values is the effort we devote to them. The set of values is hierarchical: the scale is such that the lower values are degrees of the higher values and must be integrated into them.

Values and anti-values: When we develop a faculty, the values corresponding to other faculties can become an obstacle. Too much respect for conventions and norms is preventing change from happening.
Value of values: The hierarchy of values is also due to the effort we make to activate certain faculties rather than others: "the degree of values is always related to the degree of effort which, as soon as it gives up, brings us back to ease and indifference.”

Milton Rockeach

Milton Rokeach is the first psychologist to have made an important theoretical contribution to the notion of values from the 1960s. According to Rokeach, a value is "an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence."

Rokeach establishes a typology of thirty-six values subdivided into two sets of equal number. The first set corresponds to terminal values that relate to the purposes of action. In this set, we differentiate:

Personal values: Comfortable Life, Exciting Life, Freedom, Self-respect, Wisdom, Inner harmony
Social values: World in peace, World of beauty, World with equality, World with security, Ecological world, World of justice.

The second set includes instrumental values that concern the means of action. Their nature is either moral or competence.

Moral values lead to the behaviors necessary, in particular towards others, to achieve the final values: courage, honesty, obedience, politeness, tolerance, and responsibility.
Competency values answer the question, "What do we believe is necessary to be successful in life?" Some authors call them competitive values: ambition, independence, logic, intelligence, and imagination.

Rokeach devised a questionnaire: the Rokeach Value Survey. The approach to values allowed Rokeach to characterize four major ideologies: socialism, communism, capitalism, and fascism, along two axes of equality and freedom, each ideology being characterized by the strong or weak importance it gives to these two above values.

Shalom Schwartz

In the 1990s, Schwartz refined Rokeach's approach by identifying 56 values divided into 10 groups following research carried out in 54 countries among 44,000 people. Most values are universal. We can expect to find them in all cultures because they correspond to the characteristic requirements of human existence: biological needs, needs for inter-individual coordination, and the need for continuity within society. The ten groups of values were regrouped into four: Openness to change: Autonomy, Stimulation

Self-centeredness: Hedonism, Self-realization, Power
Conservatism: Security, Conformism, Tradition
Self-transcendence: Universalism, Benevolence

Schwartz developed a questionnaire: the Schwartz Value Survey, which allows each participant to become aware of the importance they give to each value as a guiding principle. This model allows, in the continuity of Rokeach's work, to connect individual values to those of social groups according to a theory in which the conflicting oppositions between four groups of values are highlighted:

Self-centeredness and stimulation versus Conformity, Tradition, and Security
Universalism and benevolence versus Accomplishment and Power
Hedonism versus Conformity and Tradition,
Spirituality versus Hedonism, power, and accomplishment.

Other studies that have built value surveys include the lists of 15 values or five values that match more or less those of the above research.

Comments

The concept of value can be compared to that of interest and preference, but it is generally considered that values are more general and more fundamental than interests and preferences. When values are deeply ingrained, they indicate a strong preference for some activities and a set of behaviors.

In the field of education, the values known as impressive (harmony with the environment, safety) and expressive (acceptance of risk, search for freedom, and active participation) have shown their relationship with the choice of topics being studied and the after-school activities.

The notion of value is useful to focus on developing and avoiding some behaviors. On the other hand, its measurement is difficult to specify, is malleable, and remains highly subjective. Saying, for instance, that a person shows “moral” values in a specific context means that the person’s attitudes, behaviors, and decisions belong to a repertoire and follow some norms that belong to this context. Since, in reality, the set that qualifies that ”moral” value in this context is vast, only a few examples are selected to validate the person’s “moral” value. Or one may point to examples or counterexamples of behaviors within or outside that repertoire.

The two concepts of value and social behavior complement each other. Social behavior measurements, such as those from GRI’s adaptive profiles, provide insights into the behaviors a person values, shares, and expresses. The measured natural behaviors reflect their norm and reality. The profile also shows the behaviors the person values and feels the need to adapt to, along with the effort and energy required to do so. The appropriateness of social behavior depends on the situation and the person’s ability to suspend judgment and adapt their behavior. There is no social behavior that is inherently wrong unless it is not valued or inappropriate for a given situation.

Values, preferences, interests, and social behavior are interrelated. The value system that a person follows gives them some guidelines to judge their own actions and those of others. It also influences their attitudes toward others and the choices they make to act or avoid certain behaviors. How this happens distinctly for anyone, at different intensities and adaptation levels, is informed by the adaptive profile.

Values, preferences, interests, and social behavior are interconnected. The value system a person adheres to offers guidelines for evaluating their own actions and those of others. It also influences their attitudes toward others and the choices they make to behave or refrain from certain behaviors. How this occurs uniquely for each individual, at varying levels of intensity and adaptation, is shaped by the adaptive profile.

Personal values are connected to cultural values and societal norms. Company cultures share common values that establish expectations and shared understandings of what is good and beneficial. Without cultural values, there is no benchmark to assess the virtue of individual contributions. Therefore, corporate values are important, especially regarding social behaviors, which define how the results need to be delivered.