HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1526799
Unifying Work Values: Establishing a Circular Framework Based on Basic Human Values
Provisionally accepted
- 1Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- 2Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- 3Department of Psychology, Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This paper addresses challenges in personal work value research, particularly the lack of theoretical and explanatory foundations. With a focus on lists of constructs and potential biases and blind spots in past work value conceptualizations, the diversity of instruments used to assess values in organizational settings has led to ambiguity and incomplete progress in the field. By integrating propositions from basic value research, this paper develops a comprehensive work value theory. The theory is based on the compatibility and conflict of underlying basic motivational goals in work contexts, as postulated by the theory of basic human values (Schwartz, 1992). We review past instruments from work value research to consider a broad range of constructs with the purpose to refine broader work value constructs and enhance their theoretical capabilities in organizational settings. To achieve that, we resolve definitional inconsistencies, enable a context-sensitive theorizing of values in a motivational circumplex and broaden the scope of work value constructs to cover personal and social-focused dimensions. The latter is discussed considering the fantasmatic logic of neoliberal ideology. The developed theoretical framework can guide future research on the role of work values for organizational behavior and organizational performance, as well as on the role of fit between personal and organizational values. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to empirically validate the proposed work value model across different cultures and organizational contexts.
Keywords: Work value, Basic human value, Neoliberalism, Person-organization fit (PO fit), Organizational Psychology
Received: 13 Nov 2024; Accepted: 18 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schneider, Kern and Lorenz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jannick Schneider, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Stuttgart, 70569, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Timo Lorenz, Department of Psychology, Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.