Putting on the velvet glove: The paradox of "soft" core values in "hard" organizations

Arild Wæraas ()
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Arild Wæraas: School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Postal: Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business, P.O. Box 5003 NMBU, N-1432 Ås, Norway

No 09-2015, Working Paper Series from Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business

Abstract: Following New Public Management and Reinventing Government reforms, public sector organizations are expected to pursue values such as efficiency, performance, and accountability, reflecting a ‘hard’ identity as managed organization. By examining the contents of 394 core value statements retrieved from U.S. federal agencies, this study examines the importance of these values relative to other values reflecting alternative identities. It finds that the agencies prefer to rely on ‘soft’ values such as integrity, respect, openness, and customer orientation to express their identities. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for our understanding of organizational actorhood in a public sector context.

Keywords: Actorhood theory; organizational identity; public sector values; construction of organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L22 M10 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2015-04-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-reg
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:nlsseb:2015_009

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