Enhancing staff commitment through organizational values: The case of a homeless shelter

The power of values statements to focus the efforts of an organization and motivate its staff has become increasingly apparent in recent years. This article presents efforts of a large homeless shelter to articulate and institutionalize a set of organizational values to guide work with clients. A cross-sectional survey of staff identified factors which helped enable staff to use the values on a daily basis. Awareness of and commitment to the organization's values were significantly related to using the values to guide one's decision making. Commitment to the values was also significantly related to staff having positive views of clients and being committed to high performance. (C) 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.