GUIDING VALUES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

Mission statements are used to guide the action of individuals within an organization. Such guidance is more readily accepted if it aligns with an individual's identity. One way to determine potential for alignment is to... [ view full abstract ]

Mission statements are used to guide the action of individuals within an organization. Such guidance is more readily accepted if it aligns with an individual's identity. One way to determine potential for alignment is to determine if values align. However, basing such evaluations on just a word choice may not result in an alignment if individuals have different meanings assigned to the same words. As an ethical issues in business then, we need to determine the degree of agreement about word definitions of value words which are a shorthand way of sharing of concepts that are used to guide action and belief.
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This paper looks at the degree of agreement among graduating seniors from a college of business for their collective agreement about the definitions of a beginning set of value words. The work finds significant agreement across almost all of this initial set of value words. There is some confusion for the words: collaborate and cooperate. This encourages us to confirm other value words used in mission statements or as extensions of mission statements that intend to guide the actions of organization members.