Work Values and Facet Theory: From Intercorrelations to Individuals

The article proposes a new mapping sentence (MS) for values, including negative values and moral virtues. The MS allows defining work values and discriminating them from work attitudes. Previous studies on work values proposed essentially two facets, namely, type of work outcome and performance relatedness, to explain their structure, but these facets are unreliable when classifying work values. It is suggested to utilize job facets from job satisfaction research as an alternative for the work outcome facet. Using a sample of 471 employees who rated the 21 work values of the Munster Work Value Measure (MWVM), the item intercorrelations reflect such job facets as sectors of a circumplex that approximates a circle in multidimensional scaling (MDS) space. The principal components of the items can be represented as vectors in the same space. An unfolding model is then proposed that allows testing the extent to which the work value circle also holds within, and not just across, individuals. We show that this model holds for almost all individuals. The scatter of the persons in unfolding space is related to gender, educational level, and age of the respondents. For HR practitioners, these findings offer various diagnostic springboards, such as an economical way of diagnosing a person’s main work values and identifying individuals with typical and unusual work value profiles.