Saturday, December 7, 2013

Values - Classification

In the last byte, we understood about values and their increasing significance in the organizational context today. In today's byte, we look at the classifying these values and attempt to understand them better.

When one looks at the remarkable accomplishment of Dr Muhammad Yunus, one would definitely begin to wonder where he got this energy from! It is to be understood that, if he didn’t have a larger than life goal of seeing a better living standard for the people surrounding them, then something like this wouldn’t have been possible to achieve. This terminal goal played a serious role in his ability to achieve the change that he has been to initiate.

Similarly, values could be seen as terminal in nature - these values represent the goals to be achieved or the ends state of existence. Goals like World Peace, Self-respect, and Prosperity etc are all examples of those.

While these are more a goal to work, there are other values that represent the acceptable behavior to be used in achieving some end state. These are called Instrumental Values. Examples of these could be values like independence, courage, ambition etc.

It could be seen that, both terminal and instrumental value work in concert to provide individuals with goals to strive for an acceptable way to achieve the goals.

No comments:

Post a Comment