Identifying the roles that values serve in guiding stakeholder expectations of organizations (2015)

Using the theoretical foundation of human and organisational values found in extant research, this study sought to create an instrument that quantitatively represents the socially desirable values stakeholders use to evaluate organisations. The study builds on research that identified, through focus groups and content analysis, the values and corresponding expectations stakeholders consider to be most important when evaluating an organisation, and the organisational values most frequently communicated by the world’s most profitable companies. The purpose of the current study is to develop corporate values research by assessing the validity of the values identified in the earlier studies among a nationwide stratified sample of adults.