Dr David Beech, an Organisational Psychologist and Lecturer here at the University of Salford, recently presented his research on cultural values and collective rules and roles in corporate governance at the 11th World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR), held at Sapienza University, Rome.
The WINIR conference brings together leading researchers from across social sciences and humanities to examine how institutions – the rules and routines that enable and constrain collective action – shape societies. This year’s theme focused on private and public institutions for good governance.
About David’s research: motivational values and evolving varieties of constitutional niche construction in corporate governance
The fundamental rules that govern – enable and constrain – action in both societal communities and corporate enterprises are written and unwritten constitutional rules; for example, the USA constitution and state and federal corporate laws or EU company law.
There is considerable variety in the different constitutional niches, different societies and different types of organisation construct and develop. David’s paper addressed the broad foundations for the motivation and evolution of the rules and roles that govern corporate enterprise and make these organisations work.
Additionally, his paper addressed three broad levels of the rules and roles that govern, coordinate, and implement organised collective action in large social groups for common goals and mutual gains.
David made five linked proposals that extend research on corporate governance:
- Schwartz’s pancultural motivational values are an expression of general selection theory and this helps explain how collective action is motivated and evolved. See below for more on this new approach to evolving niche construction in corporate governance.
- Cultural values motivate and govern all three broad levels of institutions as rules – constitutional, policy (collective-choice), and operational rules – that are fundamental to making organisations work. These rules, which enable and constrain action, were identified in Ostrom’s Nobel bank prize winning research on economic governance.
- Ostrom’s research on economic governance can be extended by recognition of sociologist, Parsons’ identification of three levels of role authority and responsibility in all forms of large organisation: governance legitimacy; managerial coordination; and technical, frontline, implementation roles. These role levels of authority and responsibility correspond respectively to Ostrom’s constitutional, policy and operational levels of rules.
- Cultural values motivate and govern all three levels of both institutional roles and rules.
- Combining Ostrom’s research on levels of institutional rules with Parsons’ research on levels of institutional authority and responsibility, contributes foundational elements to corporate governance research.
These five proposals contribute to a broader and deeper foundation for researching and developing good governance in private and public institutions.
Values and corporate governance: motivating and evolving organisational practices that work
Values are socially learned beliefs about desirable goals in life and such values-based goals motivate and govern collective action. Schwartz has identified ten pancultural values-based goals that can be organised by four broader goals as follows:
- Competitive struggle pro-self goals of achievement and power.
- Cooperative pro-social goals of benevolence and universalism.
- Pro-autonomy variation goals of self-direction, stimulation and hedonism.
- Pro-order survival goals of security, tradition and conformity.
David proposed that these values-based goals are an expression of Darwinian general selection theory: in the competitive struggle to survive, living things cooperate to reproduce and multiply, and, in the process autonomous variation occurs. Through the competitive process of natural selection, the strongest survive and the weakest die. Accordingly, collective action is motivated, governed and evolved by constantly evolving competitive and cooperative interactions which produce constantly evolving variation and survival.
In conclusion…
This paper makes an original contribution to wider national and international policy research on improving corporate governance and also contributes to the University of Salford’s mission to innovate to enrich lives.