According to ISI’s Journal Citation Reports, the Academy of Management Journal had a 1-year impact factor of 5.608 in 2011, making it the highest rated empirical research journal out of 166 “management” journals, and 113 “business” journals.
The final citation is: Gehman, J., Treviño, L.K., & Garud, R. 2013. Values Work: A Process Study of the Emergence and Performance of Organizational Values Practices. Academy of Management Journal, 56: 84-112.
Gehman, Joel, Linda K. Treviño, and Raghu Garud. 2013. Values Work: A Process Study of the Emergence and Performance of Organizational Values Practices. Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1, 84–112. doi: 10.5465/amj.2010.0628.
In the paper we combine actor network theory with practice theory to study the emergence and performance of organizational values practices. Specifically, we study the development of an honor code within a large business school over a 10-year period. As with codes of conduct more generally, honor codes are designed to deter dishonesty and to promote integrity and honor. A brief summary is available here.
The paper has been a “Top 10 Recent Download” at SSRN multiple times and in multiple categories (here, here, here, here and here). This week, I received notice that it was now also among the Top 10 Downloads of all time (January 2, 1997 to March 4, 2013) in the Journal of Psychology of Innovation eJournal.
This week I learned that the paper was listed as an SSRN Top Ten download for the fifth time. This time the paper was ranked as an Top Ten download in 10 different categories:
This week I learned that the paper was listed as an SSRN Top Ten download for the fourth time. This time the paper was ranked as an Top Ten download in 2 different categories:
This week I learned that the paper was listed as an SSRN Top Ten download for the third time. This time the paper was ranked as an Top Ten download in 3 different categories:
This week I learned that the paper was listed as an SSRN Top Ten download for the second time. This time the paper was ranked as a Top Ten download in 23 different categories:
In the paper we combine actor network theory with practice theory to study the emergence and performance of organizational values practices. Specifically, we study the development of an honor code within a large business school over a 10-year period. As with codes of conduct more generally, honor codes are designed to deter dishonesty and to promote integrity and honor (McCabe, Treviño, & Butterfield, 1999).
Traditionally, honor codes have encompassed a bundle of values practices, such as: (a) a signed pledge affirming that students have done their assignments honestly; (b) sanctions that are determined by a student judiciary panel; (c) examinations that are administered without proctors; and (d) expectations that students will report on their peers if they observe them cheating (Melendez, 1985).
In the paper we argue that existing cognitive and cultural perspectives on values have under-theorized the processes whereby values come to be practiced in organizations. We then address this gap by studying the emergence and performance of what we call values practices, defined as sayings and doings in organizations to articulate and accomplish what is normatively right or wrong, good or bad, for its own sake.
In other words, we conceive of values practices as ends in themselves, and thus, analytically distinct from organizational practices driven by technical or efficiency considerations. Examples of values practices include efforts to address normative concerns in areas such as ethics, diversity and sustainability, among others.
To understand values practices, we draw inspiration from scholars who have combined a practice perspective with insights from actor-network theory as a way of generating new theoretical insights. This approach enables us to move from cognitive understandings of values as abstract principles and cultural understandings of values as symbolic artifacts to a performative understanding of values as situated in networks of practices.
We apply this perspective to study the development of an honor code within a large business school over a 10-year period. Based on our analysis, we offer the concept of values work comprising four key interrelated processes – dealing with pockets of concern, knotting local concerns into action networks, performing values practices, and circulating values discourse. These processes are depicted in the figure below.
Taken together, these insights contribute to an understanding of the work involved in the emergence and performance of organizational values practices as well as the work that values practices perform and provoke in organizations. We conclude the paper by discussing some of the opportunities and challenges that values work implies for future organizational scholarship.
I just finished watching Lawrence Lessig’s fascinating “Getting the Network the World Needs” in which he first summarizes 20th century cultural discourses (i.e., text, photography, film, music, etc) as being essentially either Read Only (RO) or Read Write (RW). With the exception of photography, Lessig sees the 1900s as largely passive and RO, and thus more or less consistent with the predictions of Sousa and Huxley at the start of the century.
At about 20 minutes, he gets to the heart of his talk: copyright laws. “Copy-right” laws regulate the right to make copies. He summarizes these regulations as differentiating between free uses, regulated uses and a thin sliver of fair uses.
For example, reading, giving and selling books are all free uses. However, today we live in a network economy. In this world, the use of copyrighted works implicitly requires that we copy those works. Unlike the 20th century in which culture was passively consumed, in the 21st century culture is actively produced/created. Thus, 20th century copyright laws + 21st century network platforms have produced a world of unintended consequences (ala Merton?) whereby the (re)production and (re)creation of culture entails de facto the violation of copyright laws.
One result has been a decade long copyright war (about 33 minutes into the video). It is a war of prohibition waged against filesharing. It is a war which has not reduced filesharing, but has simply labeled our children as criminals. He notes that apparently our children do not pay attention to Supreme Court rulings, because its decision to side with the copyright enforcers has in no way deterred filesharing. His working solution (at about 37 minutes) is a 2X2 matrix which differentiates between professionals vs. amateurs and copies vs. mixes.
Professionals must clearly have copy-rights if they are to have any incentive to create. However, amateurs should be free to remix these works. It is the intersection of amateur-copies and professional-remixes that Lessig sees as gray areas (are these Moral Gray Zones ala Anteby?). In terms of the amateur-copies, what are the limits to how many copies an individual can make? e.g., Can I share my “favorite” songs with my 10,000 “friends” on Facebook? Where do we draw the line on copies by amateurs? In terms of professional-remixes, at what point does an amatuer remix turn commercial? e.g., If my YouTube mashup goes platinum who should share in the profits? When does an amateur remix turn professional?
Clearly these are questions of value — and thus squarely within the realm of my research interests. Indeed, it is the questions raised by these gray areas that intrigue me. In particular, Lessig asks what does justice look like in a world where free markets meet free culture? One solution he poses but then immediately criticizes is the Darth Vader approach to fan mashups taken by George Lucas. In this case, Lucas owns the commercial rights to everything fans have created, even their original works, an approach Lessig equates to digital “sharecropping.”
Ultimately, Lessig concludes that the copyright wars must be stopped, and that we must pursue peace (sue for peace?) — through changes in our copyright laws. For him, abolishing copyright laws is not the answer. At the same time, he argues that in the 21st century the existing 20th century system of copyright laws can never work. Maintaining them will mean either revolution or the end of creation. Here he draws a parallel between the copyright laws and the Soviet Union. For Lessig, only by updating our copyright laws can we save another generation of children from being labeled as criminals for simply enacting culture.
