Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Personal values

Personal values are both important and necessary in the work place. Without them, a business would have no integrity or reliability, resulting in a loss of costumers. Shalom Schwartz developed a well accepted and comprehensive theory of peoples personal values. Schwartz believes that, “values are motivational in that they represent broad goals that apply across context in time.” For example, if you value power, that same drive to gain power in the work place can also help you gain power in other areas in your life.
Schwartz proposed that behavior is guided by 10 broad values which include: power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. Each of these has a definition as well as an underlying motive. I agree with this list, all of these characteristics are desire by people in one way or another. Some people might want a certain trait more than others, yet everyone has a motive.
I did some additional research on what motivates people’s personal values and found that values are taught at a young age and are enforced by your parents, yet as we become adults we take on a bigger responsibility to stay true to our core values. Values can separate as well as bring people together; in life people tend to surround themselves with people with similar morals and values.

Development of Personal Values. Jerry Lope.
http://personaldevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/development_of_personal_values

3 comments:

  1. I agree with Mark that values are taught and developed at a younger age. I personally feel that it would be harder to develop characteristics such as achievement, self-direction or power as an adult if you never developed them as a child. On the other hand, I still think people can develop these skills and traits it might just take them longer than a person who was taught as a child.

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  2. I agree that many, if not all, values are developed in the early stages of a person's life but I also agree with the book when it makes the statement that earth shattering events that might occur during a person's life can reshape or change a person's value system. I also concur with the fact that we like to surround ourselves with people whom have similar beliefs and values because that is just in innate instinct we have as human beings, and we do so sometimes without even knowing it.

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  3. i agree that people’s personal values and found that values are taught at a young age and are enforced by your parents. I also think that even though if you don't gain this from your parents you can also gain it from the person you look up to in your childhood as well

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