HOW VALUES AFFECT INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Individual and organisational behaviour can be affected and influenced by a number of elements but none more than individual and organisational values. Values are the core of an individual’s personality and an organizational behaviour. Values are the unwavering, enduring beliefs that guide our preferences, decisions & actions. We use them to evaluate all around us. Values generate our behaviour by helping us solve common human problems for survival by comparative rankings of value, thus resulting in answers to questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do them. These values are result of history and events, economic conditions, social changes, popular culture, technological advances, cultural upbringings and of course personal experiences. Due to influences to each individual’s values, people’s values differ in a wide range but they can still be categorized in the form of generational values, cultural values etc. For our analysis we will focus on generational values and how they impact on individual and organizational behavior.
Generational values are the values that are shared by an aggregate of people who were born over a span of roughly two decades or about the period of one phase of life, they encountered major historical events and social trends while going through the same phase of life. In this perspective, affiliates of a generation are fashioned in enduring ways by the period they encounter as children and young adults and they share a fair amount common beliefs and behaviours. Being aware of the experiences and traits that they have in common with their peers, members of a generation would also share a sense of common perceived kinship in that generation. These differences in values between the generations will bring forth a variation in the perceptions and behaviours of individuals and organizations.
Observed are four major generations in this century,...
