Dave, your message triggered the following pair of comments:
(1) DEFINING AND ASSESSING INDIVIDUAL/ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES. Without
prejudice either for or against his methods, one who is interested in
values of individuals, or of official values of the organization really
has no choice than to become aware of the work of Professor Brian P. Hall
of the Univ. of Santa Clara, and his Santa Cruz company called Values
Technology. Why? Because Hall has developed over more than two decades a
major architectonic of values along with testing and analytical methods
that sharply focus on values, their levels or layers, correlation of
individual and corporate values, etc. If you like his material, you will
want to study it in depth and apply it. If you don't like it, you will
want to work on explaining why it requires change.
(2) UNDERSTANDING ORIGINS AND NATURE OF BELIEF, AND THE RELATION THEREOF
TO ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS. If you want a very fundamental, timeless
description of fixation of belief and the relative merits of alternative
approaches, please read the paper by Charles Sanders Peirce called "The
Fixation of Belief", originally published in Popular Science Monthly 12,
November, 1877, 1-15. You can now find it in James Hoopes (Ed.), PEIRCE
ON SIGNS, Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1991.
I guarantee you that if you read this original paper your views on belief
will never be the same again, and you will have insights that go beyond
anything you have learned in the past.
-- JOHN WARFIELD Jwarfiel@gmu.edu