Values in Professional Practice: Towards a Critical Reflective Methodology

Abstract

A prevailing conceptualization of values in organizations regards values as preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existence. Accordingly, values are pursued through prescriptions, actions of implementation and evaluation, based on the presumption that values inform actions. Thus, holding the ‘right’ values leads to desired practice. However, this is a problematic stance, suppressing the fact that correlation between value and action is highly questioned. The article claims that proliferation of values in organizations is more plausible and influential turning the process around, utilizing the ideas of sensemaking, tacit knowledge and virtue in a critical reflection-upon-action model, engaging organizational members as co-researchers of their own value constructions in context.