Values are the bedrock of any corporate culture. As the essence of a company's philosophy for achieving success, values provide a sense of common direction for all employees and guidelines for their day-to-day behavior. These formulas for success determine (and occasionally arise from) the types of corporate heroes, and the myths, rituals, and ceremonies of the culture. In fact, we think that often companies succeed because their employees can identify, embrace, and act on the values of the organization.

These values may be grand in scope ("Progress is our most important product"), or narrowly focused ("Underwriting excellence"). They can capture the imagination ("The first Irish multinational"). They can tell people how to work together ("It takes two to Tandem"). Or they can simply drive ("15 percent period-to-period sales and earnings growth"). If they are strong, they command everyone's attention: "What people really care about around here is quality." If they are weak, they may often be ignored: "It's not the same company since the old man stepped down. Nowadays everyone around here is just more or less doing his own thing."

"Rational" managers rarely pay much attention to the value system of an organization. Values are not "hard," like organizational structures, policies and procedures, strategies, or budgets. Often they are not even written down. And when someone does try to set them down in a formal statement of corporate philosophy, the product often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Biblical beatitudes--good and true and broadly constructive, but not all that relevant to Monday morning.

We think that society today suffers from a pervasive uncertainty about values, a relativism that undermines leadership and commitment alike. After all, in this fast-paced world, who really does know what's right? On the philosophical level, we find ourselves without convincing responses. But the everyday business environment is quite different. Even if ultimate values are chimerical, particular values clearly make sense for specific organizations operating in specific economic circumstances. Perhaps because ultimate values seem so elusive, people respond positively to practical ones. Choices must be made, and values are an indispensable guide in making them. Moreover, it is clear that organizations have, in fact, gained great strength from shared values--with emphasis on the "shared." If employees know what their company stands for, if they know what standards they are to uphold, then they are much more likely to make decisions that will support those standards. They are also more likely to feel as if they are an important part of the organization. They are motivated because life in the company has meaning for them. Since organizational values can powerfully influence what people actually do, we think that values ought to be a matter of great concern to managers. In fact, shaping and enhancing values can become the most important job a manager can do.

For those who hold them, shared values define the fundamental character of their organization, the attitude that distinguishes it from all others. In this way, they create a sense of identity for those in the organization, making employees feel special. Moreover, values are a reality in the minds of most people throughout the company, not just the senior executives. It is this sense of pulling together that makes shared values so effective. Let's look at a few:

 - Caterpillar: "24-hour parts service anywhere in the world"-symbolizing an extraordinary commitment to meeting customers' needs. 

 - Leo Burnett Advertising Agency: "Make great ads"--commitment to a particular concept of excellence. 

 - American Telephone & Telegraph: "Universal service"--an historical orientation toward standardized, highly reliable service to all possible users, now being reshaped into values more relevant to a newly competitive marketplace. 

 - DuPont: "Better things for better living through chemistry"--a belief that product innovation, arising out of chemical engineering, is DuPont's most distinctive value. 

 - Sears, Roebuck: "Quality at a good price"--the mass merchandiser for middle America. 

 - Rouse Company: "Create the best environment for people"-a dominating concern to develop healthy and pleasant residential communities, not just to build subdivisions. 

 - Continental Bank: "We'll find a way" (to meet customer needs). 

 - Dana Corporation: "Productivity through people"--enlisting the ideas and commitment of employees at every level in support of Dana's strategy of competing largely on cost and dependability rather than product differentiation. 

 - Chubb Insurance Company: "Underwriting excellence"--an overriding commitment to excellence in a critical function. 

 - Price Waterhouse & Company: "Strive for technical perfection" (in accounting).

Most of these phrases sound utterly platitudinous to the outsider. Indeed, many of them are little more than slogans that might be (and often were) used in advertising campaigns. What makes them more than slogans is the degree to which these phrases capture something people in the organization deeply believe in. Within each of these corporations, these words take on rich and concrete meaning.

We call these phrases "core values" because they become the essence of the organization's philosophy. These slogan-like themes are only the most visible parts of a complex system that includes a whole range of beliefs about how the organization should achieve success. These values and beliefs are closely linked to the basic concept of the business and provide guidelines for employees to follow in their work. . .