Handbook of Human Performance Technology: Principles, Practices, and Potential, Third Edition

Chapter 21. Shifting Organizational Alignment from Behavior to Values

Anthony W. Marker

One of the greatest challenges for a modern organization is that of keeping all its members moving in the same direction and continuing to do their jobs in accordance with the organization's goals, missions, and values as the business grows. Yet as growth occurs, the hierarchical distance often increases between those setting the goals and those producing the bulk of the organization's products and services. The greater the distance between those two organizational functions, the greater the opportunity for communication to become garbled, distorted, or simply lost. Think of the childhood game "Telephone," in which a message is passed down a chain of people, ...