ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the literature that deals with values and explores how it assumes that they are a legitimate subject for managerial intervention which managers have the power to choose and change. Many discussions of values in the literature link together values and the idea of culture change. The chapter suggests that values are not so easily subject to management manipulation as the dominant literature pretends. However, in many organizations it is my experience that there are often quite intense value conflicts taking place which have the potential for both creativity and destruction. On the one hand values are an important part of our identities and help us to become who we are; on the other hand they set up powerful processes of inclusion and exclusion, and strong compulsion to belong. The chapter draws a distinction between the ways that the orthodox literature takes up values in the context of culture change in organizations.
