ATTITUDES, VALUES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE - DISENTANGLING THE CONCEPTS

Sentiments collected through paper-and-pencil surveys are often arbitr arily classified according to categories imposed by the researcher, su ch as attitudes, values, and manifestations of organizational culture. The question is, to what extent are such classifications supported by the distinctions that respondents make in their own minds? In this pa per, distinctions between categories of sentiments are supported empir ically from the results of an employee survey in a large Danish insura nce company (n = 2,590). The 120 questions used were classified into a ttitudes, values, perceptions of organizational practices (for diagnos ing organizational cultures), and demographics. Perceptions of organiz ational cultures were measured using an approach developed by the auth or and his colleagues in an earlier study across 20 Danish and Dutch o rganizational units. In the insurance company study, employee attitude s were found to be clearly distinct from employee values. Perceptions of organizational practices were unrelated to values, and only overlap ped with attitudes where both dealt with communication. In the latter case, both can be seen as expressions of the organization's communicat ion climate. Other perceptions of organizational practices did not for m recognizable clusters at the level of individuals, but only at the l evel of organizational (sub)units.