Organizational values expressed in the websites and its relation with corporate branding and social desirability

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ABSTRACT 
 
During the last years companies are increasing the use of the corporate website on internet to 
show to the society information about themselves. About the corporate information they 
show, it’s usually described the values of their corporate culture. By this study is purposed to 
analyze the values that companies, operating in the Spanish market, publish in their websites. 
It’s done in two different sectors: hotels and food business. It’s questioned if the corporate 
values published are related to social desirability in an intention of the companies to align 
them with the social desired values, using their published corporate values as a marketing 
strategy related to build a positive corporate branding. It’s analyzed the website of thirty-one 
and thirty two companies in hotels and food business respectively to extract their published 
values. By other hand it’s analyzed the social desirability of the Spanish society about which 
values are considered desirable for the companies in any sector, in tourism and in mass 
consumption sector. It’s been found a match between the more desirable values in companies 
of the tourism sector with the values more frequently published in hotels. It hasn’t been found 
a statistical significant difference of values depending on the sector, but some possible reasons 
are described. This research has some important practical contributions and opens new lines 
to continue researching in this field. 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Internet is a global communication tool that allows companies to show to the society many 
aspects of themselves. During the last years it’s increasing the use of the website to inform the 
society about the corporate culture, and the values that it is composed. It could be supposed 
that the values declared in the corporate website is a truthful information that companies 
show to the society, but it’s needed to question if it’s really to inform the main objective, or it’s 
hidden other strategic intentions of marketing related to build a positive feeling to the 
consumer about its corporate branding. It’s possible that the strategy of the enterprises is to 
make consumers feel an alignment with the values desired by the society with the values 
published in their website, about their supposed corporate values of their culture.  
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That hypothesized desire of the alignment with the societal desired values could have the 
impact of devaluating or cancelling the significance of the effect pretended by the brand. 
Differentiation requires positioning, not products, but the whole corporation. Accordingly, the 
values and emotions symbolized by the organization become key elements of differentiation 
strategies (Hatch and Schultz, 2003). If all the companies declares the same values of their 
organizational culture, the strategies of marketing could make to the brand of the companies 
suffer the problem of don’t distinguish one company compared to the others. The consumer 
might don’t feel there is one brand that its values are more coincident with him than others. It 
can be related with the Gestalt theories that remark the importance of highlight the figure on 
the background. 
Other problem that would suppose to base the corporate values only by social desirability, it 
would be a possible not alignment of the values desired by society (published as corporate 
values by the companies) and the individual values of the workers in the company.  
The objective of this paper is to analyze the content of the website of companies operating in 
Spain and extract their espoused values from the corporate information, to see the differences 
and similarities between companies and sectors about their corporate culture published in 
internet. It’s going to be analyze in two different and concrete sectors to see if there is a 
different structure of corporate values published depending on the type of the product or 
service in which the companies have their business. By other hand is going to be studied the 
preference of the Spanish society, as consumers, about which corporate values are considered 
desirable in the corporate culture of any company, companies operating in the tourism sector 
and companies operating in the mass consumption sector. In this study, those values are going 
to be named with the label of “social desirability values”.  
It’s expected to find a match between the corporate values that companies publish and the 
social desirability values. It’s expected also, to find in hotels companies a different structure of 
corporate values than in food business companies. 
This study follows the line of research of the study made by Blasco, Córdoba and Cornejo 
(2007) that found in an exploration at the website of 72 companies from 16 different sectors, 
that the most published values on their web-site were ethics, security-health, innovation, 
customer orientation, quality and hard-working by this order. That research suggested that 
companies publish their values in the corporate information of their website, and those 
corporate values seems to be related with social desirability. It’s suggested also, that there are 
different values structure depending on the sector of business that the company operates. By 
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the present paper, the contribution to this research line is to analyze in a deeper way two 
concrete sectors (hotels and food business), by analyzing a higher sample of corporate 
websites in each concrete sector, and compare the values observed, with the results of a 
questionnaire of social desirability values designed to explore the priority of the Spanish 
society, as consumers, about the desired corporate values in the companies.  
In the same research line a more ambitious project is carried out. The present paper will 
contribute on it as a part of that more global research. This is one of the three researches, in 
which each of them will analyze the corporate values of different subsectors in the same 
sector. That will permit to make analysis between sectors and inside the same sectors. 
Specifically it’s being analyzed in the tourism sector from Hotels, Travel Agencies and Leisure & 
Entertainment companies; while in the Mass Consumption sector it’s being analyzed values 
from Food business, Drink business and Beauty and Hygiene companies. 
It’s interesting to make a review on the scientific literature about the research published 
around the main concepts of the paper. 
 
Values and corporate brand values 
The scientific interest in values started by Allport G.H. in 1928 saying that the real truths and 
the more enduring values of life are simple and the task of the social psychologist is to teach 
individuals to examine the ends for which they submit themselves to regulations. Just a few 
years later Allport and Vernon (1931) built a scale to measure the relative prominence in adult 
personalities of six universal values. Those values were named social, theoretical, economic, 
aesthetic, political and religious. Catril and Allport (1933) found in their study of several 
experiments done with that instrument that there is a clear relationship between values and 
conduct, that the general evaluative attitudes enter into various common activities of every-
day life, and in so doing help to account for the consistencies of personalities.  
Rokeach (1971) distinguish attitudes and values saying that an attitude represents an 
organization of interrelated beliefs that are all focused on a specific object or situation, while a 
value refers to a desirable “end state of existence” (terminal value) or a desirable “mode of 
behavior” (instrumental value). Thus defined, a person is conceived to have many thousands of 
attitudes but only several dozens of values. These relatively few values are conceived to have 
many of all man’s attitudes as well as his behavior.  
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Human values are commonly defined as transituational goals, varying in importance that serve 
as guiding principles in the life of a person or a group (Schwartz, 2005). He identified 10 
motivationally distinct basic values that are recognized across societies, which are power, 
achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, 
conformity and security. 
Dolan and García (2002) define values as words that are relatively simple structures of thought 
which nevertheless encompass complex ideas about the reality desired by people, and resign 
its importance at work by the leadership based on values. Employees who are capable of 
articulating their own values and translating them into initiatives, into creative behavior at 
work make autonomous, flexible and committed employees. A professional without autonomy 
is not a real professional, only an operative or dependent worker. The utility of management 
by values as a tool of leadership has three main objectives: Adapt to the organizational 
complexity, to share the strategic vision and to develop the employers’ commitment. 
When discussing values, it is important to distinguish between individuals’ personal values and 
the espoused values that are characteristic of organizational cultures. Whereas personal values 
involve stable and deeply embedded structures that exist within individuals and are not 
necessarily conscious, espoused values are articulated, publicly announced principles and 
values that the group claims to be trying to achieve (Berson, Oreg and Dvir, 2008). Values 
published in corporate websites, as corporate brand values are at the level of espoused values. 
Corporate values should reflect, by one side, the qualities that are desired to be appreciated 
by the shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees and the society in which the company 
operates, and by the other side, should reflect the ways of doing that must set the culture of 
the organization to make that appreciation sustainable. At the end, the responsibility of the 
values configuration is the coherence and consistence of the company’s policies with regard to 
the values listed (espoused values), and the ability to recognize the behavior of its members, 
whether encouraging those according to the values, and avoiding the ones that are far from 
them (Ortiz, 2005). 
Frameworks postulate that corporate brand values needs respect the organization’s culture, 
i.e. the internal values, beliefs and basic assumptions that encapsulate the way things are done 
in a firm and guide employees’ behavior (Gotsi, Andriopoulos and Wilson, 2008).  That’s 
because, individuals are motivated to behave in accordance with their values in order to avoid 
the unpleasant sensation that accompanies value-behavior incongruence (Sosik, 2005).