06 212 Albu 2018 


M@n@gement
2018, vol. 21(2): 858-883 

‘Making a Difference’: The performative role of 
values in the constitution of organizations


Oana Brindusa Albu

Abstract. This study provides an overview of the current literature of 
organizational values and offers a research agenda for the future 
investigation of values from a performative perspective. The article 
encourages methodological pluralism by indicating ways of studying how 
organizational values exhibit both ordering and disordering agency, and 
how the same value can have different modes of manifestation (espoused, 
attributed, shared, and/or aspirational, negotiated, and/or embodied/
embodying). By drawing on ethnographic methods and a study of a 
cooperative organization, the paper makes a twofold contribution to 
management and organization studies. Namely, the findings show that: a) 
values have ordering properties, since they foster identification and 
collective action when invoked by managers in day-to-day work; and b) 
values have disordering properties (generating tensions, resistance and 
discursive struggles) when these position people to speak on their behalf.


Keywords: organizational values, agency, communication constitutes 
organization (CCO)

INTRODUCTION

In predominant management research the agency of values is 
t h e o r i z e d f r o m a m u l t i t u d e o f a p p r o a c h e s , a l t h o u g h t h e s e 
conceptualizations are not clearly spelled out. What it is that makes values 
‘powerful’, so to speak, has not yet been elucidated. On the one hand, 
prevailing management research indicates that values shape behavior and 
action by creating intrinsically shared loyalties among organizational 
members (Haack, Schoeneborn & Wickert, 2012) and by drawing human 
resources toward countless acts of cooperation with each other (Kotrba, 
Gillespie, Schmidt, Smerek, Ritchie & Denison, 2012).  The assumption 
follows that it is the universally good and timeless character of values that 
has obvious and easily identifiable positive ordering implications if an 
organization uses a set of moral and ethical values such as meanings 
attached to human needs (i.e., democracy, equality, sustainability) and 
pragmatic organizational concerns (regulation, economic freedom, etc., 
King & Ehrhard, 1999). On the other hand, a stream of critical research 
notes that values can not only generate everyday positive experiences but 
can at the same time lead to tensions, alienation, mis- dis- identification 
and cynicism in organizations (Thornborrow & Brown, 2009). Studies 
indicate, for instance, that managers position themselves (and are 
positioned) as being moved and constrained by values (Chaput, 
Brummans & Cooren, 2011). These values express themselves in their 
actions and conversations, but frequently contradict or clash with each 

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Oana Brindusa Albu 
University of Southern Denmark


oabri@sam.sdu.dk

 



M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

other, thus creating the perception or experience of tensions (Cooren, et 
al., 2013). Nevertheless, studies examining the potential of values to 
simultaneously produce order and disorder as a result of their performative 
nature are scarce. 

An established stream of research has indeed shown that manifold 
agencies are at play in any instance of organizing, in which both order and 
disorder occur simultaneously (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009). This dialectic 
recognizes that order comes in various degrees, which means that 
disorder and messiness are inherent to organizational processes while 
being concurrent with order (Langley & Tsoukas, 2016). As a result, this 
paper does not assume a dichotomy between order and disorder, but 
treats them as a continuum. In every situation where organization emerges 
from efforts to order action around particular meanings, rules and values, 
disorder occurs in the form of confusion, struggles, negotiations and 
misunderstandings (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Recent studies indicate that 
the (dis)order dialectic is specific to instances when values are inscribed in 
texts. This is because these texts exceed their authors’ full control since 
they leave the initial context of their creation, and authors point out that 
more research that addresses these dynamics is needed (Vàsquez, 
Schoeneborn & Sergi, 2016). The aim of this article is to provide further 
insight into the relationship between organizational values and 
communication, specifically about how values are socially shaped and 
socially shaping of organizations in both ordering and disordering ways. 
Addressing this question is important as it will create more knowledge of 
the performative aspects of organizational values: i.e. of the capacity of 
values to define and express socio-material realities. For this reason, this 
paper draws on a stream of research that sees communication as 
constitutive of organization (labeled ‘CCO’) in order to expand 
management research by offering an innovative conceptual approach for 
analyzing how organizational values exhibit agency in day-to-day 
organizational interactions. 

CCO is a relevant lens because it helps to show the performative 
nature of language since organizational realities are constituted through 
language interactions (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Talk, in this study, is not 
conceptualized as utterances employed to simply reflect and describe 
reality but to actively constitute reality. The CCO perspective is important 
as it reverses the ‘common-sense’ image of a manager who communicates 
values and then needs to do what he or she has said. Instead, language 
through its polyphonic characteristics is seen as having agency and as 
“speaking through” or ventriloquizing individuals (Cooren & Sandler, 2014: 
226). This means that when individuals communicate it is not only a 
manager, say, who is speaking or writing to another manager, but also the 
specific values to which these interlocutors are attached and which are 
mobilized through their turns of talk (Cooren, et al., 2013). Values then 
have performative implications because these stimulate action and incant a 
wished-for future (Christensen, Morsing & Thyssen, 2013). Values, in other 
words, have a constitutive role, since through them organizations talk 
themselves into a new reality (Haack, Schoeneborn & Wickert, 2012). 
While the performative qualities of aspirational talk are the subject of an 
emerging stream of research across disciplines such as communication 
and organization studies (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013; Putnam & Nicotera, 
2009), not much attention has been paid to the manifold ways in which 
values contribute to the constitution of organization in management 
research. Calls are therefore made for the study of how values exhibit 
agency and are made to speak (‘ventriloquated’) or express themselves 

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‘Making a Difference’: The Performative Role of Values 
in the Constitution of Organization                                                         M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883

(‘ventriloquizing’ others) in a given organizational interaction, thereby 
constituting organization (Cooren & Sandler, 2014).
 Because organizational values encompass a broad range of 
phenomena (e.g., values are usually investigated from multiple 
perspectives as elements of organizational identity and culture processes, 
AMR, 2000; Taylor, Irvin & Wieland, 2006), the scope of this paper narrows 
down to a study of the performative qualities of values for two reasons. 
Firstly, by focusing solely on exploring different theorizations of 
organizational values, this paper develops a conceptualization of values 
that problematizes (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011) a dominant dichotomy 
between words and actions and the cause-effect rationale for the purpose 
of providing novel avenues for future management research. Secondly, by 
paying detailed attention to how values express themselves and are 
expressed in everyday interactions, the paper develops a novel conceptual 
framework that further expands the study of organizational values as 
iterative and ongoing textual elements that have ordering and disordering 
roles in the constitution of an organization (Chaput, et al., 2011).

The article proceeds as follows: it starts by discussing how current 
research on organizational values can be enriched by acknowledging the 
performativity of values, which contextualizes both their ordering and 
disordering agency. It then provides an overview of different 
conceptualizations of values in order to identify underexplored areas in 
existing organizational values research. The article next introduces the 
methods and case (Delta , an international cooperative organization) and 1
moves on to present the empirical findings that illustrate the ordering and 
disordering agency of values. The article concludes by emphasizing the 
importance of a shift in perspective from a functionalist to a performative 
focus in management research in regards to the future study of 
organizational values. 

THE PERFORMATIVITY OF ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES 

Values are emphasized in predominant management research as 
having positive managerial implications for organizations, such as fostering 
corporate social responsible behavior and employee commitment (Hansen, 
2013). Studies often examine values as mere talk (that is, words without 
substance, often commonly understood as empty rhetoric, spin or 
greenwashing, Munshi & Kurian, 2005) and thus distinct from action 
(Brunsson, 1989). Organizations are expected to fulfill values and 
managers are frequently encouraged to ‘walk their talk’ (Maak & Pless, 
2006). Talk is thus considered worthless and leaders are urged to act 
accordingly and prove that their actions are in alignment with their values 
(George & Sims, 2007). The ‘walk the talk’ mantra has migrated into 
practice, with solutions put forward for solving the presumed dichotomy 
between talk and action. For example, even when values conflict, 
managerial literature recommends that leaders should engage in acts of 
moral imagination that will enable them to align their actions with their talk 
without relying on simple tradeoffs: one can walk the talk by “discover[ing] 
possibilities within a particular set of circumstances [and] by expanding 
one’s operative mental framework” (Werhane & Moriarty, 2009: 4). While 
these conceptualizations provide many useful insights, there is less 
knowledge about the performative aspect of organizational values, i.e. the 
capacity values exhibit to make an organization present when invoked in 
interactions, which has both ordering and disordering properties.

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1. Pseudonym used to protect 
the identities of the informants 
and organization.



M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

Performativity is theorized based on established streams of literature 
across multiple fields such as sociology, accounting, and organization and 
management studies (for a special issue on critical performativity see 
Huault, et al., 2017). Originating from Austin’s (1962) argument that to say 
something is always to do something, these discussions have expanded 
the philosophy of language across social sciences and economics (Butler, 
1993; Loxley, 2007; Wickert & Schäfer, 2014). In linguistics, the ability of a 
spoken word to perform a change in a subject is defined as a 
perlocutionary act (Austin, 1962). The focus on speech acts has been 
taken on across a wide range of disciplines, including management, where 
studies show that non-humans can engage in illocutionary acts (Taylor & 
Van Every, 2000). Performativity has been explored conceptually (Ashcraft, 
Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009; Gond, Cabantous, Harding, & Learmonth, 2015), 
philosophically (Austin, 1962; Butler, 1993), economically (MacKenzie, 
2006), and as a normative, critical project (Fournier & Grey, 2000; Huault et 
al., 2017; Wickert & Schäfer, 2014). This paper does not aim to contribute 
to these discussions (Gond, et al., 2015) despite their evident importance. 
Given the present focus on organizational values, the main argument of 
this study is that ‘talking values’ does not simply label or reflect but also 
constitutes organizational realities. This provides a way of conceptualizing 
that values do not simply describe an external reality which remains 
unaffected and should ideally mirror organizational members’ behavior 
(Kotrba, et al., 2012). Certainly, some emerging fields of research in 
organizational communication are more attuned to the idea that values, 
principles and ideals are not simply a matter of corporate greenwashing 
but are continuously inviting and expressing themselves in human 
interactions. In line with the broader literature on performativity, these 
approaches include a focus on how various elements such as values, 
ideals and principles (Brummans, Cooren, Robichaud, & Taylor, 2016), with 
their related material artifacts (Ashcraft, et al., 2009), figures of speech 
(Cooren, et al., 2013) and spatiality (Vásquez & Cooren, 2013), play a 
central role in the constitution of organizations. Such a focus on the 
performativity of values emphasizes both their ordering and disordering 
agency, underscoring the perpetual movement between order and disorder 
(Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009). This study considers the agency of values to 
reside neither in humans nor in values themselves but in an oscillating 
process where individuals are positioned (or position themselves) as 
speaking in the name of values as if it were the values themselves that 
were speaking in the interactions (Cooren, 2015). This means that the 
locus of (dis)order is not in the individuals who (mis)understand some 
element of organizing. Nor is this an operation taking place within 
individual minds. Instead, (dis)order comes from larger sets of actions 
where humans, among other elements, often act in contradictory ways on 
behalf of a set of values, mandates, or a mission etc. to make an 
organization present in interactions (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009).

It is important to clarify that performativity in this study is not used in 
the sense of efficiency (such as, how effective values are when it comes to 
shaping managerial practice); rather, the term is used to highlight the 
ordering and disordering agency of values. A performative standpoint is 
therefore relevant as it paves novel research avenues by allowing the 
analyst to jettison the dualism between values and actions and the framing 
of individuals in psychological terms as vessels carrying values into 
ontologically separate organizations. Performativity-based understandings 
of values challenge the basic tenet of functionalist approaches that values 
are distinct from action. This is because such functionalist approaches, 
when promoting ideas such as “walk the talk” (Maak & Pless, 2006), tend 

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‘Making a Difference’: The Performative Role of Values 
in the Constitution of Organization                                                         M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883

to overemphasize the dichotomy between “the walk” and “the talk”. What 
they miss is the importance of acknowledging the “plenum of 
agency” (Cooren, 2006, p. 81), i.e. the many voices (not only human ones) 
that express themselves in interactions. This is not to say that values alone 
are responsible for producing interactional possibilities, since order 
emerges from systems with many elements that are fully but not densely 
connected with one other (Anderson & Meyer, 2016). Values are only one  
of these elements but many others are at play and possess agency, e.g., 
objects, machines, as well as thoughts, rules, and so on, that make 
organization happen (Cooren, 2015). Of course, not every instance of 
communication implicates values. As research shows, values only surface 
in certain organizational interactions often in implicit (e.g. when specific 
choices are made or lines of action are adopted in accordance with a 
value) or explicit ways (when individuals position themselves as speaking 
in the name of a value). When this happens, the performative character of 
values (Cooren, et al., 2013) resides in their positioning capacity that 
causes individuals to get attached to (and be driven by) them in 
interactions. Speaking in the name of transparency, for instance, as is 
shown later, suggests that a manager is attached to this value, which 
creates the impression that she or he is driven by it. The notion of 
attachment or clinging is useful because it denotes both constraint, by 
being tied to something, and also captures the fact that we do not always 
consciously choose the values to which we are attached or that identify us 
in a certain way (Cooren, et al., 2013). For this reason, values should not 
be reduced to simple functional instruments or resources that are 
employed by people for ordering purposes and to achieve specific goals in 
interactions (Kotrba, et al., 2012). Values (which can be contradictory) 
manage to inhabit and drive interactions, since they are capable of 
extending or transcending what their interlocutors say and do, also causing 
disorder (tensions, confusion, etc.). In this respect, human beings are 
driven by the values they invoke, yet values are also driven by them. 
Attachments to values then constitute who and what individuals are, what 
they want, feel or must do, and what they believe or stand by, etc.  
(Cooren, 2015).

In sum, values are often considered to be “abstract and difficult to 
pinpoint” (Aust, 2004: 516) even though an emerging stream of research 
provides methodological and conceptual ways of approaching these 
phenomena (Chaput, et al., 2011). To avoid such ambiguity, values are 
defined in this paper as the common beliefs and priorities of a group of 
people, which are expressed and express themselves in interactions, thus 
directing and telling organizational members what is more important, what 
to pay attention to, and how to interpret meanings (Driskill & Brenton, 
2011). By drawing on the CCO lens, the paper provides a shift in 
perspective from a functionalist to a performative role of values, which is 
important as it enriches the current analytical repertoire of organizational 
values in management research. In doing so, the next section provides a 
brief review of the literature on organizational values, focusing on the way 
values and their agency are conceptualized, while stressing that these 
conceptions can be present in the same value.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES

The following review was carried out through using the Web of 
Science and Scopus databases from the period 1980 to 2016. Due to the 
interest in providing an overview of extant research on values, articles 
were selected with the highest citation index based on the Journal Citation 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

Reports' impact factor (Reuters, 2012). Subsequently, 1,252 articles were 
obtained through a search of the Boolean terms “organizational values” 
across domains such as social sciences, science and technology and 
humanities. The results were narrowed down to 263 by analyzing the 
abstracts of articles that were situated in research areas such as business, 
economics, sociology and psychology and which analyzed theoretically or 
empirically values in organizations. To ensure the reliability of the selected 
articles, a research assistant conducted a separate parallel search of the 
articles based on the Boolean terms “organizational values” across the 
same databases and then compared the results with the author, resulting 
in a reliability coefficient of 0.96 (Holsti, 1969). For the purpose of this 
analysis, only those articles that had both an empirical and a theoretical 
focus on organizational values were selected (thus those articles that 
focused on personal values in organizations were not included), which led 
to a final sample of 64 articles and book chapters. To avoid the risk of 
missing the most cited papers in journals not present in the respective 
databases searched, we compared the results with a search on the Google 
Scholar database, and only three articles would have been added. Thus it 
can be said that the review is based on extant state-of-the-art research on 
organizational values. 

The review was based on a manual content analysis which resulted 
in six partial but related categories of values derived directly from the texts 
reviewed, namely: values espoused (by top management); values 
attributed (to the organization); values shared (by organizational 
members); aspirational values (for organizational members); negotiated 
values (by organizational members); and embodied/embodying values (in 
organizational interactions). The categories emerged based on meaningful 
clusters (e.g., sharedness, negotiation, etc.) that were indicative of how 
values and their agency are conceptualized in current research. The neat 
distinction between different conceptualizations is inevitably somewhat 
artificial, since some of the research reviewed concepts cut across the 
types and dimensions. Nevertheless, these demarcations help 
demonstrate existing developments in current research and set up 
connections for paving a future research agenda in underexplored areas.  

Indicating the different conceptualizations of organizational values is 
relevant because it highlights traditional and novel ways of examining 
values: how values are manifested or manifest themselves, and how 
values are performative in terms of their agency. This is important 
methodologically, since it allows the analyst to investigate the agency of 
values when these are unequivocally present in conversations or texts and 
to map their ordering and disordering implications. In addition, it allows the 
analyst to examine the agency of values and how they shape 
organizational behavior in fundamental ways even though they can appear 
in inconspicuous, indirect or invisible ways to most organizational subjects. 
Nevertheless, this is not to say that the indicated conceptions are opposed, 
exhaustive and mutual exclusive. The same value can be conceptualized 
in different ways as having both ordering and disordering agency. For 
purposes of clarity, however, and in an attempt to systematically demarcate 
underlying assumptions for developing new ways of inquiry, the next 
section lays out the different conceptualizations of values separately 
according to their agency and modes of manifestation.

In research that theorizes the ordering agency of values, three 
overall types can be identified that demarcate how values manifest 
themselves or are manifested in interactions: by being espoused by top 
management, by being attributed to the organization, and by being shared 
by organizational members. Typically understood through qualities such as 

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in the Constitution of Organization                                                         M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883

“core” and “enduring” (Kessler, 2013: 531), espoused values are analyzed 
as invoked by top management in order to intentionally drive the way 
employees make decisions and act in organizations. Studies show that the 
agency or ‘power’ of values resides in their continuous invocation and 
articulation by managers, which provides them with an enduring, unitary or 
stable quality (van der Wal, de Graaf & Lasthuizen, 2008). The emphasis is 
placed on their ordering agency because when values are present 
“explicitly in corporate documents” (Bansal, 2003: 518) they have the 
ability to create order by prompting the implementation and coordination of 
collective action (Barley & Kunda, 1992). When inscribed in texts (e.g. in 
human resource management policies, corporate philosophy statements, 
memos and annual letters to stakeholders and shareholders), values are 
performative because they come to “create and represent value consensus 
across an organization’s senior members” (Driskill & Brenton, 2011: 31). 
Studies show, for example, the capacity of espoused values to direct action 
and generate order by examining how “leaders and managers follow the 
core values that they set for the rest of the organization” (Fey & Denison, 
2003: 703).
Attribution is the second mode of manifestation that can be identified in the 
research specific to literature on the ordering agency of values. Attributed 
values are those values that come to be acted upon, since these are the 
indicators for assessing whether or not the organization’s actions are 
representative of its values (Ostroff, Shin & Kinicki, 2005). Attributed values 
create order and underlie decision-making since they are values acted 
upon while espoused values are something which is claimed. Thus the 
difference between attributed values and espoused values lies in their 
enactment, since attributed values are singled out “from those that may be 
espoused but not enacted” (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013: 500). Studies explore 
attributed values by examining the way top managers are driven to engage 
(or not) in behaviors aligned with the values they invoke in order to 
recognize patterns of past decisions and therefore attribute the values to 
the firm (Balazs, 1990). A certain dualism between action and talk is 
promoted here retrospectively, since the methodological steps employed 
mandate one to:

1) compare what it [the organization] says to what it does and find 
out if there are differences between espoused values and values in 
use; 2) study the values over time to see if the values are merely 
rhetorical or whether they are actually used as premises for 
decisions; and 3) examine whether the values have an impact or 
whether they always lose out in conflicts between money, power and 
values. (Thyssen, 2009: 112) 

The performativity of attributed values is usually examined by looking into 
the way values that are positioned by managers in annual reports act by 
driving the history and future of the organization (Sagiv, Schwartz & Arieli, 
2011).

Sharedness is a third mode of manifestation that can be identified in 
studies exploring the ordering agency of values. Research examines the 
way shared values have performative properties through their virtue of 
embodying the “essence of organizations” (Aust, 2004: 516, Gioia, 
Patvardhan, Hamilton & Corley, 2013). Studies indicate that when shared 
values are invoked in interactions they instill order by driving employee 
identification (van Rekom, Soenen, Ravasi & Lerpold, 2007) and 
eliminating the risk of hypocrisy and legitimacy gaps (Ostroff, et al., 2005; 
Kotrba, et al., 2012). Methodologically, this entails the examination of how 
managers who position themselves as speaking in the name of shared 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

values act in consistency with them since they “have no other choice” (Fey 
& Denison, 2003: 698) than to submit to the values that uphold them. 

In sum, three modes of manifestation can be arguably mapped in 
current research that looks at the ordering agency of values: e.g., 
espoused, attributed and shared. The underlying assumption of such 
research rests on consensus among organizational members, since 
organizational values are typically defined as “socially shared cognitive 
representations of institutional goals and demands” (Rokeach, 1979: 50). 
The default explanation of such theorizing of values is based on intra-
organizational homogeneity and is specific to a functionalist view of 
organizations (Parsons, 1956). Values are typically conceptualized based 
on a dichotomy between words and actions, that is, as communicative acts 
that are the product of organizational structures (generated by shifting and 
conflicting institutional fields (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). In this case, 
consistency is the raison d'être, since congruence between the values the 
organization communicates, on the one hand, and its actions and 
structures on the other, is considered to help maintain a positive reputation, 
legitimacy and access to resources (Parsons, 1956). Studies contributing 
to this stream of literature tend to assume rationally bounded 
organizational members who internalize managerial values and act 
(usually with a lesser degree of dissent or resistance) according to their 
management’s instructions. Values are, to this extent, examined as having 
ordering agency, i.e., a positive relationship with productivity (Dawn, Brent 
& Wilf, 2000), employee commitment (Ostroff, et al., 2005) and stakeholder 
relations (Voss, Cable & Voss, 2000). The underlying rationale inspiring 
such research, while undoubtedly valuable, raises important questions 
concerning the orderly and disorderly nature of organization, since disorder 
tends to simultaneously accompany efforts to create order when organizing 
(Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009). However, the literature remains at a relatively 
abstract or theoretical level of analysis, and the exploration of the 
disordering character of values is limited, despite the fact that disorder is 
interwoven in the very fabric of organizing (Vásquez, et al., 2016). Thus, 
the second part of the review that follows next enriches the understanding 
of organizational values by focusing on their disordering agency. 

Aspirational values are the first type of values that can be identified 
in emerging research that conceptualizes their disordering agency. The 
performative implications of aspirational values are typically examined by 
mapping their progressive evolution and manifestation in daily interactions. 
For instance, the value of efficiency was found to act as a driving force 
often with long-term negative consequences (e.g., burnout) in the 
organizational members’ incessant efforts to become better at given tasks 
(Thornborrow & Brown, 2009). Similarly, the value of sustainable 
development has been found to exhibit disordering properties, since it 
leads organizational members to question formal designations of unity as it 
exists in contradiction with other values such as efficiency (Holmer-
Nadesan, 1996). At the same time, aspirational values have also been 
found to generate micro-level twists and turns that ultimately perform/
institute conflicting realities. Studies of corporate social responsibility 
strategies have shown, for instance, that rather than being empty talk and 
different from action, “[c]orporate eco-talk participates in (re)creating the 
firm and (re)constructing its relationship to nature, while opening up novel 
possibilities of understanding and action at the societal level” (Livesey & 
Graham, 2007: 336; see also Christensen, et al., 2013). Similarly, research 
has shown that aspirational values can lead to an inevitable gradual or 
“creeping commitment” (Haack, et al., 2012: 835) to specific agendas that 

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may be in opposition to initial strategic decisions due to fears of public 
scrutiny and reputational damage.

Negotiated values are a second mode of manifestation that is 
identified as having disordering properties. When invoked in interactions, 
values become the basis of discursive struggle since they come to 
represent numerous conflicting interests in organizational lives (Putnam, 
2004). Studies conceptualizing values from this standpoint focus on their 
paradoxes and unintended consequences: instead of being conducive to 
positive employee relations as a result of their presumed unifying and 
enduring features, values can lead to disorder in the form of resistance to 
organizational procedures. That is, values are inconsistent when they 
translate into everyday interactions, clashing with one another and bringing 
to light key conflicts in the organizational lives of staff members (Meyer, 
1995). Values exhibit disordering agency by generating conflict since they 
are continuously renegotiated, debated and sustained in the “interaction of 
interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims and values, 
and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realization of 
these goals” (Putnam & Poole, 1987: 552). Studies of transnational 
organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund have shown, for instance, 
that the positioning of values such as sustainability, instead of creating 
consensus, have led to disorder and a failure to meet the expectations of 
conflicting interest groups and have generated at least as much conflict as 
they promised to resolve (Peterson & Franks, 2006). 

Finally, embodied/embodying values are a third form of 
manifestation specific to emerging studies focusing on the disordering 
agency of values. On the one hand, values are theorized as embodied in 
texts, artifacts, etc. in a way that they come to speak on behalf of an 
organizational collective “we” (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). In this respect, 
studies explore how values can be mobilized in various ways, and show 
that values, depending on the situations in which they are positioned and 
the people who invoke them, have multiple modes of existence and 
therefore often contradict each other (Cooren, et al., 2013). In other words, 
because values express themselves in different ways in ongoing 
interactions, they frequently lead to contradictions in the enactment of 
actual situations, which produces the experience of disorder and struggles 
among organizational members. On the other hand, organizational values 
are conceptualized not only as being embodied in texts and making the 
organization present, but also simultaneously embodying the organization. 
Studies examine how values enable, re-shape, and re-produce the 
organization, since they are continuously debated, fixed and changed ties 
that bind members together as an organization (Chaput, et al., 2011). Such 
recursive interplay between embodied and embodying values permits 
investigation into how organizational members end up defining values that 
progressively transform themselves into norms and rules, which eventually 
become official policies that enable collective organizing (Cooren, 2015). 
The focus of such research aims to understand how various elements 
(values, principles, managers, documents, etc.) become bound together 
and co-produce a collective organizational actor that acts and speaks on 
their behalf. Studies drawing on this standpoint explore the way in which 
organizational values create disorder and a site of struggle for control, 
since these values are active elements with the power to both re-present 
and rearrange the organization (Rennstam, 2012). 
In short, this review has provided an overview of the different conceptions 
of values in management and organizational communication studies. In 
doing so, the review has enhanced the conceptual clarity of organizational 
values by identifying a variety of uses and theoretical definitions across 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

management and organization fields of research. The review emphasizes 
the importance of expanding research that theorizes the disordering 
agency of values, since this is an underdeveloped approach despite the 
fact that values have the capacity to influence organizational behavior and 
all forms of human agency. It is indeed highly relevant to gain insight into 
how to locate values in communication, especially when the same value 
can be conceptualized in the same way. Thus, this study proceeds to an 
empirical analysis that indicates ways of examining the ordering and 
disordering properties of values. The paper investigates the following 
research questions:

 How are organizational values expressed and how do they express 
themselves in day-to-day interactions?
What ordering and disordering implications do these have for 
organizational activities? 

These questions were investigated by analyzing the communicative 
interactions in Delta. Prior to introducing the analysis, the following section 
describes the methods, and data collection process. 

METHODS

DATA COLLECTION

Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study of Delta, this article 
examines a strategy of developing and communicating organizational 
values. Cooperatives are organizations in which cooperative values inform 
the democratic governance structure (Stohl & Cheney, 2001). Thus, Delta 
was chosen as a site for inquiry because it provided a diverse range of 
parameters (Baxter & Jack, 2008) in mapping the ways in which 
organizational values fundamentally shape interactions and behavior in 
organizations. The data were collected during nine months of multi-sited 
fieldwork (Marcus, 1998) in Delta, an organization where I worked as a 
seconded communication manager from 2014 to 2015. Delta is an 
international advocacy cooperative organization, i.e. it works to influence 
international policy in favor of cooperatives. Delta’s daily activities are 
defined as advocacy, that is, “the preparation, analysis, decision-making 
and communication related to the consultation process vis-à-vis 
governmental institutions” (Delta Annual Report, 2011: 2). As cooperative, 
Delta is owned not by shareholders but by all of its 139 member 
organizations from 28 countries (each with an equal right to vote for its 
strategies). Thus Delta’s governance structure is based on democratic 
decision-making and collective management. Its members meet annually 
to elect two co-presidents, the board of directors and the executive council. 
Delta’s headquarters is run by a small staff of seven individuals: two 
executive directors, two line managers, two interns and one secretary. 
Delta was selected for investigation because in organizations such as 
cooperatives with decentralized, democratic power structures, egalitarian 
values such as community, participation or democracy will tend to 
predominate and direct action (Stohl & Cheney, 2001). As a result, Delta 
constituted a rich case that provided a wide number of parameters for 
investigating the agency of values.

This ethnographic design was selected in order to provide a richer 
context for the analysis of values, since I gained access to observe and 
participate in a strategy designed to develop and communicate values to 
all Delta members, which amounted to producing corporate texts that 

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incorporated values (a press release, flip chart and manifesto). I followed 
the trajectories of the texts, investigating the relations of which these were 
part and their ordering and disordering properties (Chaput, et al. 2011). 
This design allowed me to understand how values are established, which 
relationships and actions are defined by values, and how managers make 
values present in given interactions. The data set comprises: a) two three-
hour staff meetings in which executives developed the values contained in 
the texts; b) one four-hour board meeting where the texts were discussed 
and approved by executives; c) 17 semi-structured interviews, lasting 
approximately 50 minutes, with managers involved in the creation of the 
texts; and d) 82 single-spaced pages of field notes of observations taken 
when recording was not possible during day-to-day work situations and of 
Delta communication material (emails, documents, photos). 

MULTI-SITED FIELDWORK AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 

The focus of this study is to expand research on organizational 
values and show how a performative perspective can highlight the intricate 
and complex dialectics that values introduce in organizational settings. 
While video/voice recordings were the primary methods used, detailed 
notes were taken when recording was not possible. This happened 
because a video camera is always potentially intrusive, especially since 
people tend to regard it as surveillance technology (Lindof & Taylor, 2010). 
In this respect, despite their obvious limitations of not being able to capture 
fully the richness of audio and visual settings, the field notes taken are 
treated as instances of discourse (Chaput, el al., 2011). This ethnographic 
approach allowed the identification of both verbal and non-verbal markers 
of communication that indicated the key elements (i.e., values, texts or 
digital artifacts) that appeared to dictate how people talked and acted. This 
was either because these elements appeared to matter to them (e.g., the 
value of “transparency” surfaced again and again in Delta members’ 
discourse and they often spoke in the name of the members’ rights) or 
because elements expressed themselves in managers’ speech and action 
without suggesting that these managers were overtly or necessarily 
attached to values of democracy in an explicit manner (e.g., sometimes 
Delta members’ positions could be deduced from the directness with which 
they expressed themselves). The ethnographic design allowed me to show 
how values ‘made a difference’ in the way Delta’s presence was 
coproduced and dealt with through interactions in this context. For 
example, Delta stopped being simply an abstraction when I observed 
managers acting (voting) on Delta’s behalf in board meetings or when I 
saw Delta’s president negotiating its presence with local authorities.
Therefore, an important aspect of the ethnographic analysis involved 
identifying the markers based on how these expressed themselves on a 
recurrent, iterative basis in the recorded interactions. These markers were 
relatively explicit in specific turns of talk (e.g. when Delta representatives 
kept positioning themselves as speaking in the name of the value of 
democracy, which can qualify as an espoused value) or relatively implicit 
(e.g. when specific choices were made or lines of action were adopted, 
which can be an embodied/embodying value, Cooren, et al., 2013). The 
multi-sited fieldwork approach provided therefore a measure of 
triangulation, as most of the data were evaluated in relation to at least one 
other data source. The collected data were analyzed based on grounded 
theory using an online database via the NVivo software. The unit of 
analysis was one sentence or one image. Each unit was itemized based on 
lower-level actions (an utterance or a gesture), whose selection was 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

influenced by the analyst’s experience during data collection with field 
notes and repeated watching of the video data. A collection of lower-level 
actions constituted a higher-level action, i.e., a conversation about values 
in a staff meeting (Norris & Maier, 2014), which was then subjected to 
coding. 

Furthermore, in order to examine how organizational values 
manifest and are manifested in both explicit and implicit ways in the 
observed instances of discourse, the data were analyzed through 
discourse analysis (DA). This method was selected because it facilitates 
the study of unobtrusive or indirect meanings in texts which “are related to 
underlying beliefs, but are not openly, directly, completely or precisely 
asserted” (Van Dijk, 2001: 104). Since organizational values are the kinds 
of meanings that are often alluded to without being explicitly expressed, DA 
allowed me to spotlight this information which is “part of the mental model 
of a text, but not of the texts itself” (Van Dijk, 2001: 104). Subsequently, 
through the study of communicative interactions I was able to reveal the 
presence of organizational values in texts. To analyze the images through 
which organizational members communicated values, I used multimodal 
discourse analysis (mDA) (Manchin, 2013). In this respect mDA was used 
in conjunction with DA analysis to facilitate the analysis of interactions that 
were subject to computer mediation (images posted on social media, email 
exchanges, live streams of board meetings online). Through mDA, both 
lower-level mediated actions were analyzed (smile, gaze, technological 
object handling) as well as high level ones (those actions that social actors 
usually intend to perform and/or are aware of and/or pay attention to, such 
as several utterances chained together by speakers, gaze shifts, postural 
shifts and so on) were analyzed. By combining these methods, I was able 
to identify the presence of mediated discourses which appeared in ways 
that might not be obvious and that are much more difficult to express 
through language, since images tend not to have such fixed meaning, or at 
least the producer can claim that it was more suggestive and open to 
various interpretations. This methodological approach permitted the 
identification of how values unfold upstream and downstream (Cooren & 
Sandler, 2014), i.e.: a) how values are made present by managers in 
similar and dissimilar situations, and b) which values represent the 
managers and make them speak. 

Finally, the findings from both the ethnographic and discourse 
analyses were coded by highlighting potential markers of value 
identification, such as the use of pronouns, repeated keywords, or giving 
explicit accounts about Delta’s activities and history (Chaput, et al., 2011). 
Recurring substantive codes were clustered into themes (Lindof & Taylor, 
2010). First-level coding involved repeated comparison and contrast of 
recurring threads in the data, which allowed me to identify open and 
focused codes that illustrated the way values were present in 
inconspicuous or obvious ways in the communicative acts that guided 
individuals’ actions (“increasing our visibility; showing who we are; 
exposing our values” (interview, manager)). Second-level or axial coding 
permitted me to label four key themes that demonstrate the agency of 
values diachronically: the first illustrates how values are informally 
discussed between managers when setting up a press conference; the 
second presents how values materialize in the interactions of managers 
working in the cooperative house; the third indicates how values are 
handwritten on a flip chart during a staff meeting; and the fourth shows how 
values are inscribed in a cooperative manifesto. The analysis is next 
presented based on these four incidents (the press release, the “mad 
house”, the flip chart and the manifesto), and shows that when values are 

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invoked by organizational members, identification and order are only partial 
implications. Values at the same time introduce disorder in the form of 
contradictions, tensions and authority struggles. 

THE (DIS)ORDERING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL 
VALUES IN DELTA

THE PRESS RELEASE

The values of solidarity, subsidiarity and transparency are inscribed 
on the first page of Delta’s annual report in bold letters: “We are united with 
due respect to our differences making alive the principles of solidarity, 
transparency and subsidiarity. Together we are stronger to assert our 
identity, to defend and promote our specificities” (Delta Annual Report, 
2011: 1). These values, as Delta managers indicated in many similar 
instances, were relied upon in annual reports, on the website and official 
documents because they were considered to instill collective and 
accountable decision-making and strategic cooperation: “[…] one member, 
one vote. Everyone has a voice here, not like in multinationals where only 
shareholders get to call the shots” (manager, interview). The inscription of 
values in Delta’s annual reports and other official texts indicates that these 
can be conceptualized as espoused. Delta’s top management expected 
these values to ultimately become shared and introduce ordering 
properties such as fostering identification within the employee-organization 
relationship (Maak & Pless, 2006; Hansen, 2013). While nevertheless 
important, conceptualizing the values only as belonging to the espoused 
and shared categories, would present a one-sided understanding of values 
since it implies a tendency to focus only on their ordering agency while 
overlooking the disorderly aspects of values. At first glance, it indeed 
seemed that Delta’s cooperative values exhibited ordering agency through 
their capacity to “enable creative and productive action” (Barley & Kunda, 
1992: 364). Over a period of twelve months, Delta’s values, the 
“cooperative ethos”, surfaced on a day-to-day basis during the interactions 
I witnessed at lunch breaks, team meetings, board meetings, coffee 
breaks, and in emails, etc. Needless to say, the values not only manifested 
themselves in “the way the board [of directors] desired” (manager, 
interview), that is, by having ordering properties and being espoused, 
shared and attributed. At the same time, the values were positioned and 
positioned managers in contradictory manners, leading sometimes to dis-
identification and resistance among individuals, which is evidence of their 
negotiated aspect. Nevertheless, in spite of occasional resistance, the 
values generated the impetus of unity and collective identification “we” 
because organizational members were positioned by the values to work 
around common goals, which led the values to become ultimately “shared”, 
at least temporarily, among Delta’s employees. This vacillation shows that 
the same value can be conceptualized as being both shared and 
negotiated. 

Furthermore, values could be conceptualized as both shared and 
attributed when they produce order and exhibit the capacity to define the 
actions, roles and authority positions of organizational members (Seeger & 
Ulmer, 2003). As indicated by the following field note excerpt from a board 
meeting: 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

I check my wristwatch and it’s 9.56 am. Twelve managers sit 
around the U-shaped table of the meeting room. All wear headsets 
on their ears listening to the live translation from two booths in the 
back where two translators were whispering each word the 
president was uttering from Italian into English. I am in charge of 
taking the minutes of the meeting and I type as fast as I can. The 
first item on the agenda is about a press release which Delta is 
supposed to organize the following week. The president says “the 
cooperative values are our DNA. They help us become visible to our 
member organizations. We have agreed to do this [he holds up the 
press release which was signed by all managers in the room] to 
help all of our members perceive the importance of our policies”. 
Everyone else around the table nods, seemingly in agreement. The 
president then adds, while pointing with his finger to the document 
on the table: “Basically, at the press conference we will discuss our 
values as the strategic guideline for next year. It [the press release] 
is the result of different consultation processes, different priorities 
over how we want to appear to our members. We received quite a 
number of recommendations from our members, not always 
converging towards a single aim.” (field note excerpt from a board 
meeting, 2015, emphasis added) 

In the above interaction, values manifest themselves as shared and 
attributed (“values are our DNA”) since they guide managers’ decision-
making by acting as a “strategic guideline” which is a form of subversive 
control (Barley & Kunda, 1992). This is evidence that values can be 
theorized as belonging simultaneously to the shared and attributed 
categories since they are a way of controlling how Delta’s existence is 
perceived and experienced by its members. The managers appeal to 
values not only to make Delta present (“appear to our members”) but also 
to ensure that Delta is presentified in a certain way by explaining to their 
members (“we have to help our members understand”) what this presence 
implies, that is, what this presence should mean to them or how they 
should make sense of it (Cooren, Brummans & Charrieras, 2008). 
However, conceptualizing values as having the ability to shape managerial 
action solely in a rational and orderly manner may offer only a one-sided 
understanding of their role in organizations. This is because, as the 
following analysis indicates, when invoked or when “folded within” (Cooren 
& Sandler, 2014: 234, italics in original) organizational interactions, values 
can generate as much disorder as order. In Delta’s case, the cooperative 
values (i.e., solidarity, subsidiarity, transparency, community and 
democracy) initially exhibited ordering qualities, specific to the espoused 
values category, since these prompted collective action across multiple 
sites and organizational levels: discussed informally between managers in 
the park, handwritten on a flip chart, inscribed in a press release and 
cooperative manifesto, stated in staff and board meetings, coffee breaks 
and in email exchanges, etc. At the same time, Delta’s set of values, the 
ethos which was inscribed in a corporate text (“the press release”), while 
being promoted to Delta’s member organizations and the public, also had 
the capacity to “embody”, i.e. make Delta present as an organization 
present (see Cooren, 2015). These findings show that the same values can 
be theorized as pertaining to both espoused and embodying categories 
due to their performative properties. This is also indicated by the following 
excerpt from a team meeting where managers from Delta and its member 
organizations manipulated and were being manipulated by Delta’s values:

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David (manager, Delta): If we issue the press release with the 
[values’] paragraphs and your [the member organizations’] logos on 
the same level with ours, it [the press release] will be emphasizing 
the equal relations with Delta, it [the press release] will weaken our 
leading position.

James (manager, X cooperative): So, I mean, in the document we 
foresee a very broad message, taken from each organization. I 
mean, it [the press release] should put everybody together in 
agreement since it [the press release] shows what we’ve done in the 
past and in what way we should become more visible to our 
members from now on, and that’s all.

Ellen (manager, Y cooperative): Yeah. I think it would be good that in 
the press release about Delta you would still have a paragraph from 
each [organization]... But (.) I mean the values for us are more 
technical and we would like to write that paragraph. 
Tim (manager, Delta): Well, that’s the problem. You don’t seem to be 
on the same page with us.

Diana (manager, L cooperative): Of course you have to keep in mind 
the differences across organizations (.) but I mean..(.)... I think our 
values concerns all of us when setting it [press release] up. We 
need to recognize the diversity, but still to keep it [press release] 
broad to connect to all. (fieldnote fragment from a team meeting, 
2014, emphasis added). 

The negotiation over the press release shows the ability of values to 
presentify Delta, since speaking and acting in an organization’s name can 
always become a source of concern because it affects how its mode of 
being is co-constructed (Cooren, et al., 2013). Each manager was 
positioned by the values in a certain way (“for us it’s more technical”) and 
framed the others as opponents (“you don’t seem to be on the same page 
with us”), which defined their roles and authority (“will weaken our leading 
position”). During the meeting, the managers were repeatedly embodied 
by, and embodying the values, in contrasting ways, and pressed for the 
inclusion of their own position in the press release despite the presumed 
sharedness (“we need to recognize diversity, but”). The discursive struggle 
took place and continued throughout the following weeks because Delta is 
made present by its values and can therefore be questioned, obstructed, 
altered, etc., at all times. While the values had been temporarily shared by 
managers during the board meeting a week before, in this instance the 
values created disorder since these manifested differently and continuously 
shifted between shared, aspirational, attributed qualities in interactions, 
creating the experience of tensions and contradictions (“well that’s the 
problem”). After the meeting ended, in a brief email exchange between 
myself and two Delta managers in charge of the press release 
coordination, the managers hinted at the feeling of disorder introduced by 
the values they were experiencing, which deemed collective action 
“impossible”:

Me: How do you think it [the meeting] went? Can we go forward with 
it [the press release]? [It] [s]eems we share the values, but [we’re] 
still not in agreement. 

David (manager, Delta): We share, yes. But sharedness is 
something that does not mirror the complexity of the situation.

Tim (manager, Delta): Cooperating in cooperatives? Impossible. 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

THE MAD HOUSE

At times, Delta’s values exhibited ordering properties in the form of 
providing managers with the basis for identification and a way to assert 
their collective identity, which is evidence of the shared qualities of values. 
Concurrently, Delta’s values continued to induce disorder and to generate 
struggles, proof of values’ negotiated and embodied/embodying properties. 
Managers reported experiencing an atmosphere which was described 
through the “madhouse” metaphor—a wordplay on the name of Delta’s 
headquarters, the cooperative house. This common feeling occurred 
because values often temporarily disrupted authority positions among 
managers given their capacity to “transpire” differently, as the following 
field note fragment illustrates: 

I enter a wide-ceilinged meeting room where two Delta senior 
managers await to provide me with an introductory overview of 
Delta’s lobbying activities.  On the table there are three copies of 
Delta’s annual report. One manager turns to me, smiles and says 
loudly “So, welcome to the madhouse!” After a one second hiatus, 
everyone, including myself, laughed in a rather artificial manner, as 
we tried to appear relaxed—we were all a bit anxious. We then 
started going through the reports. During the lunch break, I was 
sitting together with one of the managers on one of the benches of 
the small garden situated in front of our building. While opening my 
lunchbox, I asked the manager what the “madhouse” was about. He 
answered while pointing at the “madhouse” with his plastic white 
fork: “Well, you know, Delta is a young organization. We have been 
leading for seven years only. We all share the cooperative ethos, but 
also because of it everyone else does not want to renounce their 
leading [advocacy] role here with the government, especially the top 
managers. Everybody is defending their turf and they all want to be 
out there”. The second manager, who had joined us on the bench 
meanwhile, added: “I mean, we do have a challenge in terms of 
communication, trust and transparency. There is a strong 
discrepancy between how our values transpire to the local 
[cooperatives], national [associations], and macro level [member 
organizations] and you [Delta] (field note fragment, 2014, emphasis 
added)

While Delta’s values were repeatedly invoked as shared “our values”, when 
manifesting in interactions the value of cooperation clashed with the value 
of transparency as these materialized in “discrepant” ways and caused 
“everyone to defend their turf”. The values oscillated between the shared 
category (providing the basis for collective identification, “we all share the 
cooperative ethos”), and the negotiated one (spurring discursive struggles 
that impeded decision-making among Delta managers in everyday 
organizing). One instance indicative of the negotiated nature of values 
occurred the following week in a “closed-door” meeting about finalizing the 
details of the press release, despite the aim of creating sharedness and 
increase identification between employees and the organization, “our 
cooperative identity” (staff meeting, manager). One manager described 
such closed-door meetings, in which only top managers participated, as 
involving “only politics, not exactly mutual cooperation in there” (staff 
meeting, manager), therefore implicitly positioning Delta’s top management 
in opposition with their espoused value of cooperation. During the meeting 
the manager continued to invoke the values of cooperation and community 

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in an implicit manner in order to (rhetorically) question the present lack of 
unity and strategic consensus. Delta’s values shifted from the shared to the 
negotiated category since they contrasted with Delta’s management 
intentions and thus became contested across its complex international 
structure, creating tensions that threatened Delta’s collective identification 
processes and “unity”: 

Tim: Do we represent Delta or not? We say so everywhere but there 
is much ambiguity and no straightforward answer can be provided 
about who we are. In moments like these when we can’t really 
decide on our agenda I don’t feel our unity. 

Allen: I echo that. Our member organizations do not understand 
what we do (.) our values (.) they are too far from the political scene. 
We need to provide them with more information and make our 
activities clearer since we are facing difficulties (fieldnote fragment 
from staff meeting, 2014, emphasis added).

As evidence of their negotiated manifestations, Delta’s values also 
introduced disorder since they led managers to question the top 
management’s “unity” and authority (“do we represent Delta or not?”) and 
decision-making (“we can’t really decide”, “we are facing difficulties”). 
Delta’s values had the capacity of presentifying Delta in conflicting ways 
across different sites, which happened when managers set up the invitation 
letters for the press conference. The letters became an object of discursive 
struggle, which is also proof of their negotiated properties.

Despite the fact that during the board meeting the managers had 
agreed beforehand to coordinate the press conference as a shared event 
driven by common values, each sent their own letter to Delta’s 
stakeholders in order to gain authority, which fueled the discursive struggle 
over their “unity”:

I wonder if we really give the impression of unity. I don’t know. If a 
politician receives three different letters from our managers that are 
part of the same organization [Delta] I don’t believe it gives a good 
sense of who we are. So I think that maybe we should cooperate 
more and be more consistent with our values (Board Member, 
Board Meeting)

By manifesting themselves in interaction and being included in the letters, 
the values made Delta present as an organization (Chaput, et al., 2011). In 
doing so, the letters did not simply and passively disclose something (e.g., 
letters announcing the press conference and stating Delta’s cooperative 
values). Instead, by espousing cooperative values the letters had the 
capacity to represent Delta as a collectivity and make it present in different 
contradictory ways to others and to its own organizational members 
(Brummans, et al., 2016). As indicated in the manager’s response during 
the board meeting, the letters by containing Delta’s values were 
constitutive of Delta’s collective identity in a disorderly and fragmented 
way, which is evidence of the values’ espoused and negotiated 
manifestations:

Delta makes a proposal [of the press release], tables it to the board, 
we agree, meet and now we hear that this idea might be dropped 
because of the disagreements over who [managers] is to be in it 
[press release]. There is a consistency problem. And you cannot 
send a letter to a politician that we are going to stage a press 
conference and then we change our mind. It’s not consistent with 
who we are. If we don’t stage a press conference it will be 
detrimental to our image (Manager, board meeting)

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

Furthermore, while Delta’s values of solidarity, subsidiarity and 
transparency imply and dictate that people help each other because they 
are part of an organization, these materialized in conflicting manners. The 
letters acted as embodiments of their values which came to speak by, to, 
and for themselves (Cooren & Sandler, 2014: 226), evidence of their 
embodied and embodying manifestations. The following field note fragment 
illustrates the ways in which the value of democracy exhibited embodying 
properties as it prompted managers to act in both meaningful and 
“meaningless” ways:

The voting cards are scattered in boxes all over the office. I am 
sorting them into three piles, yes, no and abstentions. We are 
preparing for the board meeting where the press release proposal is 
to be announced. While the piles increase in size, I find myself 
thinking that it would be very difficult to count the votes in a room full 
of people. There are eighty-four persons and some will hold up more 
voting cards than others, since those who pay higher membership 
fees and have larger cooperatives have more votes. While still 
sorting, I ask Tim, the manager sitting on the other side of the room: 
‘How do you count the votes?’ After a second of silence, he leans on 
his chair back from the computer and utters, in a cynical tone while 
waving his hand in dismissal, ‘Don’t worry, they will never vote for it 
[the press release proposal]’. He then suddenly gets up and says 
grinning ‘Oh, I need to tell this to Allen and leaves the room. I hear 
them both laughing on their way back to our office. Allen comes and 
puts a hand on my shoulder, smiles and says ‘Come on, do you 
think anyone ever voted for a change in the history of Delta?’. I feel 
puzzled but manage to smile and prepare myself to ask ‘the why’ 
question but the sound of the coffee machine in the hallway coming 
through the opened door stops me. As I turn around, I see Tim 
looking at us. While dismissively throwing a sugar cube in his cup, 
he adds with a vehement tone, ‘It is the problem of today’s 
democracy. They come and take these voting cards and it’s 
meaningless’. But, to my surprise, something that contradicts this 
happened the next day at the board meeting: during the voting 
session one board member lifted up a no vote sign while adding 
“[w]e oppose it [the press release] because it is not in line with how 
we co-operate” (fieldnote fragment, 2014, emphasis added).

In this situation, the board member invoked the value and was thus 
positioned by the value to act (vote) in its name. The value led the board 
member to hold up the no voting sign, and explicitly mention the value of 
cooperation (“how we co-operate”). As a result, instead of creating 
consensus, the cooperation value exhibited disordering agency since it 
materialized in opposition (“not in line”) and interfered with what the value 
meant for him. 

THE FLIP CHART

In the light of the “no vote” that occurred at the board meeting, 
Delta’s top management organized a workshop in which managers were 
supposed to design a strategy that would help communicate Delta’s values 
in a consistent way. Delta’s managers were well aware of the performative 
implications that values can have and thus they attempted to control the 
way values were making individuals act. This happened because the 
values exhibited the capacity to motivate what organizational members 
say, evidence of their shared properties. Delta’s top management then 

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hoped the values would also direct managers’ collective identities to 
converge in one direction, that is, achieving an identical character between 
what they say, do and are (Cooren, 2015). The following excerpt from a 
workshop with Delta’s managers is indicative of the many instances where 
the cooperative values exhibited embodied and embodying properties, 
because in being made present through communication they 
simultaneously make managers speak and define their actions:
1 Jack: So, the first issue on our list is that we need better (.) 

((writes on a flip chart the 
2 words cooperation and community)) <cooperation and 

community>. 
3 Tim: Yes. Our members want to understand who we are and 

what we do, and again, 
4 this shows again that our cooperation and community 

are not very strong. 
5 Allen: Yes, yeah. It is really interesting. (.) Although, really, 

what we’re doing is 
6 stating our values here. It is quite elementary. This is us 

((hits the flip chart with 
7 his marker pen)). So, since at the top there is a strong 
need for better cooperation 
8 and community (.) these values are our compasses at 
the next board meeting.
9 Tim: Uh-uhm ((shakes his head affirmatively))
10 Allen: Is there anything we want to add?
11 Jack:       Well, we have education and community. But most 

          importantly (.) uhm (.) is 
12 democracy (.) in the governance
13 Allen: Can you give me an example?
14 Jack: Uhm (.) so (.) that the governance mechanism is clear 

(.) in the sense that if I have 
15 a problem, I know who’s responsible. 
16 Tim: What does this have to do with values? (.) But, in fact 

(.) it could also be linked 
17 here ((gets up and points to the word cooperation on 

the chart)) –cause, I mean,
18 it’s who we are and what we do. Who we are is not just 

our board of directors. We
19 are not shareholder-owned, ‘just give me your profits’. It 

is Delta. This is us ((lifts 
20 the paper sheet from the chart and waves it through the 

air)), our values guide us, 
21 and this includes the governance and the members, it’s 

everyone. We are 
22 a cooperative, what we do we do together. So then all 

goes back eventually to the 
23 cooperation and participation values, of course. –Cause 

((waving the paper sheet))
24  this pushes us forward. (fieldnote fragment, 2014 

workshop, emphasis added) 
As illustrated in lines 1-3, the values of cooperation and community were 
made present by Jack and Tim, given their intention of improving 
identification between organizational members. Simultaneously, in the 
conversation (lines 5-8), during Allen’s account of aspirational talk 

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(Christensen, et al., 2013), the values generate order as they demarcate 
the actions and roles of managers as these are seen to act as strategic 
“compasses” (line 8) and have the capacity to “push” the managers 
“forward” (line 22). By being inscribed on the sheet of paper the values 
manipulated the managers and directed their actions. The values exhibited 
ordering agency by being constitutive of Delta and an embodiment of the 
formal organization, as Tim and Allen point to the sheet of paper on which 
the values were written and exclaim “this is us” (lines 6 and 19) while 
waving it in the air. In this respect, the values were talking to the managers 
and it was the voice of the group that contributed to the shaping and 
reaffirmation of Delta’s identity (Cooren, 2015). Nonetheless, the values 
were continuously exhibiting negotiated properties and motivated the 
managers to edit the texts containing the values, attempts which in most 
cases were driven by situational or organizational interests. These 
instances were always met with resistance given the untouchable 
character of the value of democracy. Cynicism was widespread, given the 
feeling that cooperatives were becoming less democratic at a political 
level, being repeatedly described as ‘one member, one vote is only 
theoretical’ (manager, interview). However, not all of the individuals 
experienced the tensions induced by the way the democracy value was 
manifesting itself. One manager indicated that while the disordering 
agency of values was experienced as a “massive” and “major” challenge, 
the resistance created was productive since it fostered a multiplicity of 
viewpoints and enhanced dialogue:

We want tensions within the democratic control in order to be a 
healthy cooperative. To give an example, I went to the board 
meeting of one of our organizations, a very good one which we hold 
in high esteem. And in this meeting there was a huge debate, a 
genuine debate, between those who said we need to keep 
expanding our range of products we offer and reach out to new 
people and others saying, we already worry that we’ve actually 
forgot why we started giving cheap food to those who couldn’t afford 
it. And there were really backwards and forwards debates among 
that democracy value. And I say don’t you ever loosen that tension, 
that’s what being cooperative is about. Yet, I think there is a 
difference between the good functioning of democratic control and 
also keeping it alive, [being] always together. But it is a massive 
challenge when you have high level international structures. It is 
very very hard to make it real and share it with everyone on the 
ground. This is our major challenge (manager, interview, emphasis 
added).

THE MANIFESTO

The manifesto is the text that embodied Delta’s values discussed at 
the workshop, which aimed to control the way values were manifesting 
themselves. It was created during four months of strenuous negotiations 
and communicated to Delta’s constituents, thus making Delta present 
across multiple hybrid, collective yet dislocated spaces (Vàsquez, et al., 
2016). On its cover there was a picture of with the Delta employees holding 
cardboard signs on which the values were written (see Figure 1;  faces are 
blurred to maintain the anonymity of the informants). 

�  877



‘Making a Difference’: The Performative Role of Values 
in the Constitution of Organization                                                         M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883

Figure 1 - Cooperative Values in Delta

The dress code is strikingly informal despite the fact that two people 
in the image are executives, two are line managers, two are interns and 
one is a secretary, which implicitly signifies the value of community and 
collective decision-making designed to mirror the horizontal hierarchies, 
casualness and informality. The poses are open and relaxed, thus not 
connoting deliberate control and regimentation despite the fact that they 
clearly required dedication and organization. The values inscribed on the 
cardboard could be conceptualized as empty corporate business language 
that has come to dominate public institutions and backgrounds about 
facilities, staffing and treatment (Manchin, 2013). However, a closer look at 
the way values surface in interactions indicates that in spite of being “just” 
talk they are performative and trigger both ordering and disordering 
implications. On the one hand, the manifesto brought the formal 
organization into being again and again, and became an active participant 
in (re)defining managers’ actions and authority positions. That is, the 
values inscribed in the manifesto had both shared and embodied/
embodying properties and enabled managers to act together, to become 
identified as a ‘family’ and achieve ‘sameness’ (Chaput, et al., 2011): “[t]he 
values inform our daily actions, really. And, with the manifesto I can rally 
everyone in the cooperative family” (manager, interview, emphasis added). 
As the manager indicates further, the values included in the manifesto act 
by giving him the capacity to generate order and mobilize collective action 
(“we all look the same, behave the same”): “when we communicate our 
values and principles then we all look the same, behave the same, have 
the same standards, then people would say ‘oh, I know them’ […] that’s 
uniformity” (manager, interview, emphasis added). 

On the other hand, the values introduced disorder by (de)centering 
the authority of the speaker and silencing the voices, lives, and 
experiences of those involved (Chapman-Sanger, 2003). For instance, at 
the first board meeting where the manifesto was discussed, the democracy 
value exhibited negotiated properties and generated continuous struggles 
since it made managers interact in opposing manners,  rendering them 
unable to reach consensus: one manager changed the democracy value in 
the draft of the manifesto by adding to it “in principle” because for him 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

democracy had an inherently negotiated character given that in Delta not 
all strategic processes are democratic: “Cooperatives are, in principle, 
democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively 
participate in setting their policies and making decisions” (cooperative 
manifesto, version 4, italics added). Another manager edited the value of 
cooperation arguing that it would be hypocritical not to acknowledge that 
solidarity is often sacrificed since values of economic efficiency are 
necessary for cooperatives to survive in the global economy (manager, 
board meeting). Yet another proposed the introduction of breach warnings 
based on the rationale that such a tactic would eliminate any discrepancies 
between what the organization says and does: “complying with and 
furthering these values is the job of every employee of Delta. Any 
employee who becomes aware of, or suspects, a breach of these values is 
urged to inform his or her supervisor” (cooperative manifesto, version 6). 
All of the negotiations led one manager to signal the paradoxical 
disordering agency of values after the board meeting that “we have a 
problem with the philosophy of togetherness” (manager, staff meeting). The 
ongoing negotiations show the polyphony of values and is evidence of their 
negotiated and embodied/embodying character: the more the managers 
negotiated and attempted to change or eliminate the values in the 
manifesto, the more the values motivated the other managers to speak and 
mobilized them to vote for keeping the manifesto intact in order to objectify 
and bring their collective identities and organization into existence “for 
another next first time” (Garfinkel, 2002: 216, emphasis in original). 

In sum, values were initially seen in Delta as ordering devices that 
help members identify as an organization and a form of normative control 
(Barley & Kunda, 1992). However, the values acted in both orderly and 
disorderly ways in interactions across different organizational sites: 
creating and undermining authority positions in the case of the press 
release; generating unity while fueling discursive struggles and creating a 
“mad” rather than a “cooperative” atmosphere in the headquarters; and 
fostering “togetherness” and directing strategic action in team meetings, 
while resisting certain treatments, i.e., being edited in corporate texts. 
Values thus actively participate in the process of co-constituting the 
common identity or “substance” (Chaput, et al., 2011: 254) of the 
organization. The findings show that values are performative not only in the 
sense of being used by leaders to impose the alignment of behaviors. 
Equally, values which represent and are represented by managers 
constitute a Hydra  organization: the more some managers try to fix, clarify 2
or eliminate values in the name of hypocrisy, the faster the values emerge, 
motivating other managers to act (often in contradictory manners) and 
bring the organization into existence. The study shows that values can 
affect organizational realities in both ordering and disordering ways: values 
have the potential to mark individual and collective identities, generate 
discursive struggles and re(define) organizational strategies and authority 
positions. 

�  879

2. Greek Mythology. A serpent-like 
m o n s t e r w i t h r e p t i l i a n t r a i t s . I t 
possessed many heads and for each 
head cut off it grew two more.
 



‘Making a Difference’: The Performative Role of Values 
in the Constitution of Organization                                                         M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883

DISCUSSION

This study suggests the need to challenge default assumptions 
concerning the existing theorizing of organizational values for developing 
novel research paths. Based on a brief literature review, the study provides 
a tentative overview of the different conceptualizations of organizational 
values that allows for the investigation of values from a performative focus. 
The study therefore encourages methodological pluralism by indicating 
ways of studying how organizational values exhibit both ordering and 
disordering agency and how the same value can have different modes of 
manifestation (espoused, attributed, shared and/or aspirational, negotiated, 
embodied/embodying). The usefulness of the proposed conceptualizations 
has been shown through a case study of a cooperative organization that 
employed different strategies and tactics designed to communicate values 
and increase organizational identification. The findings of the study provide 
a framework which enables future research to investigate the agency of 
values when these are unequivocally present in conversations or texts and 
to map their ordering and disordering implications. In addition, the 
framework encourages prospective studies to examine the agency of 
values and how values shape organizational behavior in fundamental ways 
even though they can appear in inconspicuous, indirect or invisible ways to 
most organizational subjects.

The findings of this paper provide an outlook on and extend the 
knowledge of organizational values by underlining the relationship between 
values and communication. The case analysis shows that when values are 
invoked in conversations, managers’ interactions are a discursive practice 
whereby managers appeal to discourses of cooperation, transparency and 
democracy for legitimizing their individual and collective identities. When 
values express themselves in conversations they make a difference to 
organizational action. That is, managers’ interactions are a social practice 
with an ideological dimension, since values both order and disorder 
organizational power structures and managers’ authority. Consequently, 
the paper illustrates that values are performative as they motivate 
managers’ actions and mark their identities, and make their organization 
present across multiple sites. The study’s contributions are twofold: firstly, 
this paper contributes to the extant literature by providing insight into the 
performative nature of values and aspirational talk in organizations (Bourne 
& Jenkins, 2013; Christensen, et al., 2013). Secondly, the paper 
contributes to management research by indicating that values not only 
function as tools employed by humans who speak on their behalf (Chaput, 
et al., 2011) and that there are both ordering and disordering agencies 
present in organizations when one explores how values affect the people 
who speak on their behalf.

This study has inevitable limitations since it is bound to one case 
study and provides a limited view of the types of agency that organizational 
values have and their modes of manifestation in a specific type of 
organization (i.e., an international cooperative). Certainly, cooperatives 
face specific tensions in terms of maintaining a transnational collective 
identity due to their multiple identification targets such as business and 
democratic participation (Stohl & Cheney, 2001). Nonetheless, the findings 
of this study may also be informative for other organizational forms, since 
workplace democracy and community and cooperation values are goals 
that many contemporary multinational organizations pursue. At the 
expense of breadth for depth, single case studies offer valuable insights for 
guiding future research (Tracy, 2013). Based on the tentative typology 
provided by this study, prospective research may investigate new modes of 

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M@n@gement, vol. 21(2): 858-883                                                                               Oana Brindusa Albu

manifestation of organizational values, or validate and/or invalidate the 
ones this article provides by investigating multiple organizational and 
institutional settings. This is important as more insight is needed into the 
historico-political circumstances and the formative forces that define an 
o r g a n i z a t i o n : t h e c o n s t i t u t i v e ( a n d n o t s i m p l y e x p r e s s i v e ) 
“deflections” (Burke, 1969) and the various elements and agencies 
omnipresent in the collective discourse of “who we are”.

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Oana  Brindusa Albu is an Associate Professor in the Department of 
Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, 
Odense. Her research focuses on organizational communication and 
information and communication technologies use in Middle East and North 
African country contexts.

We are thankful to CNRS and AIMS for their financial support.

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