Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 16, 2005

Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting

Sefa Hayibor
Pages 22-25

Salience of Organizational Values as a Determinant of Value Projection and the Accuracy of Assessments of the Values of Superiors
Some Preliminary Evidence

This paper employs data from a sample of the CEOs and top managers of seventy-nine U.S. companies and non-profit organizations to test hypotheses concerning the effects of the salience of organizational values on the accuracy of top managers’ perceptions of their CEOs’ values and their propensities to project their own values onto their CEOs. Results provide evidence that the salience of organizational values is positively related to both accuracy in subordinates’ perceptions of their superiors’ values and projection of the subordinates’ values onto their superiors. This initially counterintuitive result is explained with reference to contemporary views of projection as a heuristic rather than as a non-normative bias that results in the cognitive distortion of reality.