Core Values and Culture
An organization’s core values should be the foundation of its culture. In the case of GM, it is clear that the values embedded in the organization are not the same as their stated core values. At the very least, they violated their stated values of ‘safety’, ‘accountability’, ‘quality’, and ‘customer focus’. One could also argue that they violated a few more too.
The chart shows all GM's core values in the context of the Consilient Universal Organizational Values Framework, highlighting which ones were explicitly violated in the ignition switch scandal..
Detroit Free Press credits Kathryn Harrigan, professor of business leadership at Columbia University, with saying that the old GM structure demonstrated to employees that safety was not a top priority to management and that this culture migrated into the rebooted GM after it obtained bankruptcy protection in 2009.
All too often we see companies that proudly display their core values, but make no effort at embedding them into the organizations. It is often a checklist item that a management consultant is tasked to develop based on an off-site meeting of senior executives – and then it’s back to business as usual. These tend to be organizations that do not understand the importance of values, and how they can work for an organization. In some cases, it is just an organization that has lost its way. But the very essence of a core value is that it is prioritized over short-term profits.