Corporate leaders, with their own cherished values, play a big role in shaping their organizations and establishing their organizations' core values. The corporate leaders' perceptions of the key values are the force behind the Singapore companies' success.
Values, being the core beliefs,
ideas and things people care
and believe most, are the priorities
of people or organizations. These“understandings and ways of thinking
that are shared by members of an
organization and taught to new members
as correct” (Daft, 2001) can lead
to success and become institutionalized. Values supply the purpose and
a sense of direction, setting the standards
and giving us a sense of right
and wrong. And in fact, they are derived
from the founders and leaders
(Borromeo, 1996: 51, Sithi-Amnuai,
1996). Both political and corporate
leaders play a part in shaping organizations
and establishing values and beliefs (Horton, 1999: 32; Borromeo, 1996; Sithi-Amnuai, 1996).
To understand a given culture within
nations and organizations, it is useful
to look at their founders and present office
bearers of business organizations.
Founders are often considered to be
the principal builders of their organizations’
culture (Schein, 1983;
Selznick, 1957).
Though Martin, Sitkin and
Boehm (1985) appear to be scathing
about the seductive promise that
founders can create a culture that is
cast in the founder’s own image and
reflecting his or her own values, priorities,
and vision of the future, it is
a strongly held belief. A founder’s
own perspective can be transformed
into a shared legacy that will survive
death or departure from the institution—
a personal form of organizational
immortality (Martin, Sitkin &
Boehm, 1985: 99).
As a follow-up of Low’s 2002
study (see Appendix 1), a further
study is conducted; its primary objective
is to determine how these values
contribute to the Singapore companies’
success as perceived by
Singapore corporate leaders. Thus,
the researcher asked the most obvious
question, that is, “How do Singapore
corporate leaders believe these values
have contributed to the success of
their companies?”
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