DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

The values held by people affect both their perceptions and the ways they react and made decisions in response to conditions encountered in the organizational environment. The concept of value has several distinct meanings. To many, a value seems to be synonymous with attitude, an attitude being a predisposition to act in a certain way. An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through the process of experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon an individual's response to all objects and situations with which he or she is related (Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2002).

Perhaps more basic than an attitude, or even underlying attitude, a value is a type of belief, centrally located within one's total belief system, about how one ought or ought not to behave, or about some end-state of existence worth or not worth attaining. Thus, a value is both a predisposition to act (attitude), and an estimation of the worth of an action (Ashkanasy, Falkus, & Callan, 2000).

Value is an important construct in nearly every branch of social science, as well in philosophy, theology, and education. The many and varied uses of the construct make definition difficult. Value is a more abstract construct than attitude. Values may express either personal or social preference, and they may serve either as ends or as means to ends (Winter, 2000).

There is general agreement that values cause attitudes, according to Mueller (1998), but there is "not a one-t

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in their belief system. Indeed, to another observer, their beliefs may appear prejudiced or irrational. The issue is whether they attribute their goal to a specific belief or set of beliefs, and then act accordingly, not to the correctness of their beliefs. In that sense, value leads to behavior (Boyatzis, Murphy, & Wheeler, 2000). Rokeach (1960) found that the more central is the value held by an individual, the more likely the individual is to resist change. It is crucial, therefore, to establish a linkage between attitudes and behavior. It is also crucial that one not dwell on the efficacy of whether certain held beliefs do indeed lead to certain outcomes, particularly when it comes to values, as values can be irrational, prejudiced, or otherwise uninformed. The issue is ultimately whether one has a strong belief in one's values, and a belief that acting on those values will lead to a desired outcome (Boyatzis, Murphy, & Wheeler, 2000). Notwithstanding the link between attitudes behavior, the use of attitudes to predict single actions is not feasible. A number of studies have found a low empirical relation between attitude and behavior when the focus was on the prediction of single actions in narrow situations (Albarr

Category: Psychology - D