Schneider Jannick, Kern Marcel, Lorenz Timo
Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Stuttgart, Germany.
Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2025 Aug 11;16:1526799. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1526799. eCollection 2025.
This paper addresses challenges in personal work value research, particularly the lack of theoretical and explanatory foundations. With a focus on lists of constructs and potential biases and blind spots in past work value conceptualizations, the diversity of instruments used to assess values in organizational settings has led to ambiguity and incomplete progress in the field. By integrating propositions from basic value research, this paper develops a comprehensive work value theory. The theory is based on the compatibility and conflict of underlying basic motivational goals in work contexts, as postulated by the theory of basic human values. We review past instruments from work value research to consider a broad range of constructs with the purpose of refining broader work value constructs and enhance their theoretical capabilities in organizational settings. To achieve that, we resolve definitional inconsistencies, enable a context-sensitive theorizing of values in a motivational circumplex and broaden the scope of work value constructs to cover personal and social-focused dimensions. The latter is discussed considering the fantasmatic logic of neoliberal ideology. The developed theoretical framework can guide future research on the role of work values for organizational behavior and organizational performance, as well as on the role of fit between personal and organizational values. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to empirically validate the proposed work value model across different cultures and organizational contexts.
本文探讨了个人工作价值观研究中的挑战，尤其是缺乏理论和解释基础的问题。以往工作价值观概念化过程中，侧重于构建清单以及潜在的偏差和盲点，用于评估组织环境中价值观的工具多样性导致了该领域的模糊性和进展不完整。通过整合基础价值观研究的命题，本文构建了一个全面的工作价值观理论。该理论基于工作情境中潜在的基本动机目标的兼容性和冲突性，这是基本人类价值观理论所假定的。我们回顾了以往工作价值观研究中的工具，以考虑广泛的构建，目的是完善更广泛的工作价值观构建，并增强其在组织环境中的理论能力。为实现这一目标，我们解决定义上的不一致，在动机环型模型中实现对价值观的情境敏感理论化，并拓宽工作价值观构建的范围，以涵盖个人和社会聚焦维度。后者结合新自由主义意识形态的幻想逻辑进行了讨论。所构建的理论框架可以指导未来关于工作价值观对组织行为和组织绩效作用的研究，以及个人与组织价值观匹配作用的研究。本文最后强调了在不同文化和组织背景下对所提出的工作价值观模型进行实证验证的必要性。
