THE VALUE DILEMMA

In psychology and education, values are usually understood as personal preferences or subjective orientations toward the world. In other words, values are firmly located inside the individual subject's mind. Although this may correspond to much of our everyday experience, there is also a very different, if not diametrically opposite, way of locating value. This alternative way is illustrated by a bitter letter to the editor, signed by the pseudonym ‘A long-term unemployed with three degrees’, recently published in the leading Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.

The author of these lines talks about his or her value in the labor market. In other words, the value is primarily in the object – in this case, in the person trying to sell his or her labor power in the market. There is still a subjective element involved, namely, the fact that the value of the object is assessed by the employers. But value is definitely not just a personal preference or subjective orientation of an employer; it is something more objective and societal.

In both profit-oriented management guidebooks and critical studies of organizations, work-related values are typically treated as mental and textual constructs of ideology, used primarily for purposes of motivating employees, gaining their commitment, or achieving control.