Enhancing staff commitment through organizational values: The case of a homeless shelter

The power of values statements to focus the efforts of an organization and motivate its staff has become increasingly apparent in recent years. This a rticle presents efforts of a large homeless shelter to articulate and insti tutionalize a set of organizational values to guide work with clients. A cr oss-sectional survey of staff identified factors which helped enable staff to use the values on a daily basis. Awareness of and commitment to the orga nization's values were significantly related to using the values to guide o ne's decision making. Commitment to the values was also significantly relat ed to staff having positive views of clients and being committed to high pe rformance. (C) 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.