As Companies Face Pressure, a New HBR Analysis Asks Whether Values Hold Up
Companies have spent years defining their purpose, publishing their values and telling employees and customers what they stand for.
A new Harvard Business Review analysis raises a more difficult question: What happens when living those values actually costs something?
In “Will Your Organization Stand By Its Values, Even When It’s Hard?” HBR examines what happens when stated values run into the realities of business decisions, competing priorities and external pressure.
It’s a timely question for communications and reputation.
Because while organizations can carefully craft what they say they stand for, some of the clearest signals about purpose may come from what they do when the choices aren’t easy.
The Gap Between Values and Decisions
Employees, customers and the public have more opportunities than ever to compare an organization’s words with its actions.
That can become complicated when public commitments collide with financial pressure, changing circumstances, stakeholder expectations or competing priorities.
Most organizations have values.
The more interesting question may be how those values translate into decisions when there isn’t an obvious answer.
That’s also where the distinction between purpose, values and principles becomes useful.
Purpose can explain WHY an organization exists.
Values can describe WHAT matters.
Principles can help shape HOW decisions get made.
And increasingly, that HOW can become part of the public story.
When the Decision Becomes the Message
For communications teams, this creates an interesting dynamic.
A communicator may be asked to explain a decision after it has already been made. But in today’s information environment, the decision itself can communicate as much as the statement that follows.
How did leadership respond when challenged?
What happened when employees or customers disagreed?
Did new information change the organization’s approach?
What tradeoffs was it willing to make?
Those moments can shape perceptions of an organization before a press release, executive statement or communications plan ever enters the picture.
Eventually, the HOW becomes the story.
A Changing Role for Communications
That raises another question for the communications profession: At what point should communicators enter the conversation?
If reputation is shaped by decisions as well as messaging, communications may have value earlier in the process, bringing an understanding of how different audiences could experience or interpret a decision.
That doesn’t mean communications makes the decision.
But it can mean asking an important question before the messaging begins:
How does what we’re about to do compare with what we’ve said we believe?
For organizations that have made purpose and values part of their public identity, that question can become particularly important.
The Compass Check
Purpose: What does the organization say it exists to accomplish?
Principles: What guides its choices when priorities compete?
Practice: Do its decisions reinforce the story it tells about itself?
There won’t always be a simple answer. Organizations face real tradeoffs, and values themselves can sometimes point toward competing choices.
But the HBR analysis highlights a growing reality for communicators watching the intersection of purpose, leadership and reputation:
What an organization says matters. What happens when those words are tested may tell an even bigger story.
Read the Harvard Business Review analysis: “Will Your Organization Stand By Its Values, Even When It’s Hard?”
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