That high-level individuals play an important role in articulating priorities and shaping the sensibilities of employees is not to be disputed
Tone at the top!
The fish rots at the head!
Values have been defined as “enduring beliefs about preferable states of existence”. They express and articulate those things we care about and that we think create a better world. As expressions of the relationships that exist within a complex network, values are relational through and through: individuals actively contribute to the organizational culture that shapes and informs their sense of moral propriety, and the interactions between moral agents continually contribute to the moral fabric of the broader network. Values do not represent foundational truths, nor do they refer to an objective social reality that exists independently from a particular network of relations. Instead, normative guidelines emerge from the network of relationships within a complex adaptive system. They constitute those aspects which individuals within the organization, and the organization as a whole care about, and as such they may truly be thought and spoken of as the values of the organization and the individuals within it.
5. Celebrating Diversity
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]