MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 013 / MEANING

PUBLISH THE VALUES

Put the principles on the wall so operational decisions no longer have to carry them.

Select memorable nouns. Launch the values with executive sponsorship, design assets and examples of expected behavior. When incentives, promotion decisions or local management practices diverge, preserve both systems: one explains who the organization is; the other explains how it works.

Primary: MEANINGWORTHFAIRNESS
RATIONALE
Espoused values are inexpensive, portable and considerably easier to standardize than aligned behavior.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees can recite the values and predict that invoking them during a real decision will have no effect on the decision.
COMMON FAILURE
Treating stated values as constraints on incentives, promotions, resource allocation and managerial conduct, then making deviations visible rather than rhetorical.
STATUS
Canonical / approved

Reconstructed Handbook series.

THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Unfortunately, the research…

Claim

Behavioral integrity concerns perceived alignment between managerial words and deeds. Research on behavioral integrity, psychological-contract breach and organizational cynicism indicates that perceived word–deed gaps can affect trust, commitment and other employee attitudes.

Evidence

Work on behavioral integrity centers specifically on alignment between espoused and enacted values and promise keeping. Related research finds psychological-contract breach and cynicism associated with adverse work attitudes and emotional exhaustion.

Strength: Strong

Sources

The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.

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