Introduction

Value statements, codes of conduct and performance management systems are just a few of the means by which large firms ensure their values are both visible and embedded (cf. Bourne et al., 2019; Ciepley, 2019). By contrast, owner-manager values in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) setting are often noticeable in their explicit absence from firm websites and understanding of how they are actively embedded within SMEs is scant. Such organisations are, however, often required to (re)assess their values and related practices as a result of their lack of formal ethics guidance, resource paucities and the ethically problematic issues they often encounter (Vitell et al., 2000), such as pressure from large firm stakeholders to demonstrate social responsibility engagement or tension between profit and ethics (Baden et al., 2011). Research has consistently evidenced that owner-manager values are nonetheless pivotal in determining the ethical standards of SMEs and the presence or absence of social responsibility efforts and practices (Russo & Tencati, 2009; Schaefer et al., 2020). In the SME setting, the role of owner-manager values is comparatively heightened as owner-managers possess the ability to infuse company culture with their distinctive values (Morsing & Spence, 2019), while other drivers of ethics and social responsibility such as external regulatory and normative pressures are reduced (Kiefhaber et al., 2020).

Despite this evidence of the role that values play in SME ethical and social responsibility engagement and frequent references within prior research to categories of values, including business and personal values (Kaesehage et al., 2019) or specific values such as fairness or honesty (Hammann et al., 2009), many unanswered research questions remain with respect to SME values (Oldham & Spence, 2023). Importantly, although research has evidenced claims by owner-managers that they infuse their firms with their distinct values (Schaefer et al., 2020), this research seeks to explore how they actively embed their values within their organisations, particularly when they encounter pressure to reevaluate their values and associated practices. Gaining insights into how owner-managers seek to achieve such embedding is vital to moving past superficial understanding of values evident within the assumption that simplistic, linear connections between owner-manager values and SME values practices can be presumed without accounting for the impact of organisational context or stakeholder interventions. Securing a more robust understanding of owner-manager values embedding is crucial as the practice of SME values has profound collective social, environmental and economic impacts, as well as local, micro level impacts. Notably, as SMEs constitute approximately 95% of global businesses and contribute two-thirds of employment opportunities worldwide (World Trade Organisation, 2022) and individually they provide employment, key goods and services and frequently engage in other important activities, including civic leadership and philanthropy (Besser & Miller, 2001; Spence, 2016).

Accordingly, the article seeks to answer the following research question: How do owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises seek to embed their values within their firms and what barriers do they face therein? To practically and theoretically advance understanding of values in the SME context, the paper draws on Alain Locke’s values theory because it: (1) Accounts for the agentic nature of values practice over time and space through transvaluation (Locke, 1989a, 1989b), whilst also recognising that the nature of values themselves in terms of their rational, affective and relational features are of cardinal importance to such practice (2) Acknowledges the importance of studying values in context. Whilst Locke’s work has been overlooked within the field of organisational studies this paper seeks to demonstrate its applicability to furthering research into values and leadership, principally that focused on individual and organisational change, in a post Covid-19 world where inclusivity and diversity are of critical concern (Amis & Greenwood, 2021; Brewis, 2019).

Through drawing on empirical research with SMEs in the South West of England, the paper presents three means by which owner-managers seek to embed their values: affective values embedding, rational values embedding and building values-aligned relationships, while contrastingly identifying a number of barriers which obstruct their embedding. In doing so, the paper simultaneously provides enhanced understanding of the nature and conceptualisation of a range of key owner-manager values by means of providing a rich, in-depth overview of eight values—authenticity, localism, sustainability, integrity, fairness, care, heritage and excellence—and their accompanying embodied practices.

The paper is structured accordingly: first, an overview of the previous research on SME owner-manager values is provided alongside the theoretical framing of the paper in the form of Alain Locke’s conceptualisation of values. Second, the process of empirical data collection and analysis is discussed. Third, the findings are outlined before discussion of the implications for future research and theory within the area, as well as broader implications, are presented. Finally, the implications for practitioners and policymakers are discussed along with concluding remarks.

Alain Locke’s Values Theory and Small Firm Values

Values may be defined as “enduring belief[s] that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973, p. 5). The field of management has, when studying values, traditionally often drawn on a psychological perspective (cf. Posner, 1992) where values are broadly conceived as abstract, cognitive representations of the universal requirements of individuals or groups which may act as independent variables for the prediction of attitudes and behaviour (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987). Such a tradition is in frequent juxtaposition to the study of values within the business ethics literature (cf. Duarte, 2010) where the inherently normative character of values is stressed. In particular, through foregrounding their role in ethical decision-making via their exertion of internal pressure to act in certain ways and allow prioritisation of courses of action (Crossan et al., 2013). As an essential component of identity (Hitlin, 2003) values are often used within judgement formation of an individual or organisation, especially that relating to integrity, with related discussion in the literature focused on the cause of gaps between stated values and practised values, for example in the form of different modes of values practice or changes in underlying values (cf. Bourne & Jenkins, 2013).

This paper draws on this normative tradition of studying values, while engaging with an emerging values research tradition, ‘values work’ (Gehman et al., 2013; Vaccaro & Palazzo, 2015), which turns to practice to understand how values shape the normative realities of organisations. Such a perspective uncovers and elevates the performative efforts of groups and individuals in “working to (re)construct organizational life through purposeful and reflexive human effort to affect the values of institutions, professions and organizations” (Wright et al., 2021, p. 1451). In doing so, this work has begun to understand how values come to be within organisations via agentic efforts to sustain them, for example in the form of storytelling creative acts of expression (Espedal & Carlsen, 2021). Such a re-emphasis on values has further seen a reinvigoration of their role and relevance to institutional analysis (cf. Selznick, 1957), particularly in working towards its re-humanisation (Kraatz et al., 2020), in relation to institutional identity, logics and the “work done to create, maintain and change them” (Askeland, 2020, p. 15). Nonetheless, although this literature has provided significant insight into how values within an organisational context are sustained, the applicability of the insights it has provided are substantially limited when it comes to the SME context for two key reasons. First, the strength of influence and control that owner-managers possess within SMEs means that values are unlikely to emerge via organisational consensus or through translation from a profession into organisational practice (cf. Wright et al., 2021) but are transposed from the beliefs of the individual owner-manager into the organisation. Second, the distinct organisational features of SMEs in terms of resource paucity, size and local embeddedness (Oldham & Spence, 2022) means that such values embedding will take a very different form and nature from that within larger private and public sector organisations with multi-layered formal organisational designs. This research therefore draws inspiration from this emerging values work tradition to comprehend owner-manager values embedding. In comparison with the psychological tradition of studying values, the approach outlined in the proceeding discussion facilitates in-depth comprehension of values as they are practised, understood and implemented in practice, particularly as practices and decisions relevant to values may change over time. This approach simultaneously allows a number of the salient features of values themselves to be acknowledged, such as the manner in which they are experienced, felt and rationalised in practice, something which the field of values work has often not explicitly addressed.

The classical pragmatist movement arose in the late nineteenth century in the United States and is primarily associated with a small handful of thinkers, including Charles Pierce, William James and John Dewey, whose work took a melioristic, problem-centric, anti-foundationalist stance to emphasise the salience of individual context and experience (Pouryousefi & Freeman, 2021). Alain Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar, a leading contributor to social and race relations thinking and theory, a key member of the Harlem Renaissance and a pragmatist intellectual (Stewart, 2018). Despite Locke’s theory and thinking largely succeeding these classical theorists, his work was underpinned by many of the fundamental premises of the broader pragmatist movement to which he belonged. These primarily encompassed a rejection of philosophical universalism, absolutism and infallibility in favour of pluralistic, contextually nuanced work that forges links between practical reality and abstract philosophy (Washington, 1994b). Although Locke is primarily known for his melioristic work on race relations and his contributions to racial equality (cf. Locke, 1935), of all the early pragmatist scholars he presented arguably the most clearly defined conceptualisation of values and their influence upon social life which was predicated on a critique of a top-down approach to values: “most theories of value make, rather than seek to discover, a system of value” (Locke, 1917, p. 7). Locke’s conceptualisation was nonetheless reflective of his interest in critical issues of identity, community and the relationships between different social groups and was imbued by a fierce rejection of the absolutism, uniformity and indisputability which regularly accompanies values theorisation in favour of an acceptance of pluralism (Macmullan, 2005).

Locke regarded values as playing an essential role in directing activity and shaping our interactions with others, while acknowledging that they cannot be considered as reducible to a single reality but can only encompass one facet of a given reality as they are “rooted in attitude not in reality and pertain to ourselves, not to the world” (Locke, 1989b, p. 46). Despite this, Locke recognised that value claims become objectified intersubjectively between individuals with ethical values, with ethical values characterised by feelings of obligation predicated on notions of right versus wrong (Locke, 1917). Locke, through drawing on the work of Nietzsche, outlined a theory of values which viewed values and valuation as salient to the human experience and existence, emphasising the importance of inner states of feeling as fundamental to human experience (Helbling, 1979). He argued their functional role to be of feeling attitudes, apprehended through intense sensory experiences which lead to habitual impulses towards specific courses of action. Through appeals to experience, values claims can be validated, but such a process is a continuous and open ended one (Washington, 1994a). In contrast to a modern psychological approach which typically stresses the universality of values (cf. Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987), Locke argued that values are culturally specific and thus temporally and geographically bound, only functioning with any reliability within specific contexts (Moses, 2013). The relational and contextual nature of values is reflected within common experience between social agents, which in the organisational context may manifest within organisation-stakeholder values fit (Bundy et al., 2017), bringing a sense of shared familiarity (Harris, 1997), while values often draw normative validity from societal pressures.

Although Locke regarded values as affective in the immediate sense, he argued that they simultaneously derive much of their salience from reason and judgement, with reflection and rationality a key element in their determination. In Locke’s view values are transformed over time because of their inherent fluidity and interchangeability and the subject’s changing relationship with a value. Values, as Locke theorised, are disputable and can be comprehended as claims to value which can be sanctioned or invalidated when considered alongside other values. Transvaluation, “the process of reflective reconsideration of given values” (Locke, 1989a, p. 124), is a normal feature of the values sphere as a result of the dynamic nature of values. In particular, given the influence of cultural and social forces, the impact of individuals changing over time and the need for values at certain times to be interchanged (Mason, 1988). Evaluation and revaluation may further transpire retrospectively to maintain continuity between new and old through drawing on the individual’s new vantage point and fluctuations in context over time inevitably shape these values-based judgements. Engagement in reflection or evaluation may alter the position of a value, for instance owing to the needs of the individual engaging in the valuation process, leading to conflict between values, which can only be resolved by the individual at hand (Washington, 1994a).

Organisational ethics and social responsibility practice within SMEs are largely shaped by and reflective of the values and therefore personal concerns, interests, passions and behaviours of owner-managers (Cambra-Fierro et al., 2008; Russo & Tencati, 2009). This is attributable to the dearth of formal tools, structures and resources that SMEs have to manage ethics and social responsibility (Sendlhofer, 2020), which may well be unsuitable and ineffective within the small firm context (Fassin, 2008). This informal approach is further often compounded by a lack of institutional pressure to act ethically, as well as the power that owner-managers possess as both principal and agent to embed their own values (Luederitz et al., 2019).Given the relevance of values to the character and identity of founding/owner-managers (Kiefhaber et al., 2020), personal values provide both the motivation for owner-managers to direct organisational resources towards the amelioration of social and environmental issues (Kaesehage et al., 2019; Kearins et al., 2010) as well as a satisfaction upon enactment (Sen & Cowley, 2013). Commonalties within the previous literature suggest that key values, including care, independence and integrity (Oldham & Spence, 2022; Spence, 2016), play a vital role in the prioritisation of moral issues, for example in shaping responses to and engagement with environmental issues (Schaefer et al., 2020). The role of values may be notably acute within the small family firms where values such as trust, loyalty and a sense of belonging span, or religious values are reinforced, across both familial and professional domains (Haugh & Mckee, 2003), leading to a often heightened sense of responsibility towards employees (Mariani et al., 2023).

This is not to suggest that employees do not influence the values at play within small firm life, for instance given the often considerable influence that key employees may play in supporting and influencing owner-managers as well as reinforcing organisational culture (Haugh & McKee, 2004; Schlosser, 2015). However, as entrepreneurship is inherently “a values driven activity” (Morris & Schindehutte, 2005, p. 473), owner-manager values are particularly salient in shaping the goals and the mission of such firms, especially where explicit social, environmental or cultural goals are embedded therein (Kearins et al., 2010). Values may also define how organisational success is constructed, be it in the form of profitability or preservation of cultural heritage, for example, as well as the likelihood that success is achieved (Kotey & Meredith, 1997; Gorgievski et al., 2011). Despite the previous literature suggesting that little explicit communication of values tends to take place in the SME context (Perrini et al., 2007), values shape the relationships that SMEs possess with key stakeholders and the practice of ethics therein, for example with employees (von Weltzien Hoivik & Melé, 2009), as owner-managers are the face of the firm in building and managing stakeholder relationships, such as those with the local community or with buyers/suppliers (Miller & Besser, 2000; Morrissey & Pittaway, 2006). Shared values are imperative to the forging and strengthening of social bonds between SMEs and stakeholders, which in turn generate moral obligations to make sense of which facets of social responsibility are important to stakeholders and to act upon these for their benefit (Lähdesmäki et al., 2019). Conversely, values incongruence between SMEs and stakeholders may lead to the presence of conflict and accompanying alterations to stakeholder relationships (Vitell et al., 2000).

A robust body of evidence has highlighted the role and influence of SME owner-manager values in determining the nature and form of ethics and social responsibility engagement within SMEs. Beyond explicit decision-making and role modelling on the part of owner-managers (von Weltzien Hoivik & Melé, 2009), comprehension of how owner-manager values, and particularly how their specific understanding of these values, come to be embedded within the culture, norms and practices of SMEs remains limited. Owner-managers may seek to build stakeholder relationships based on key values (Lähdesmäki et al., 2019), but they are nevertheless contemporaneously unlikely to follow the large firm approach of formally embedding their values through performance management systems or applying pressure to suppliers (Lim & Phillips, 2008). It may therefore be tempting to suggest that they are broadly passive in inculcating their values within their organisations. However, given that owner-manager values, notably those of authenticity and integrity (Morsing & Spence, 2019), constitute the moral cornerstones of small business life, embedding and communicating values and generating buy-in from stakeholders, such as employees and the local community, are likely to represent both morally and practically salient concerns. As such, this research seeks to enhance understanding of the steps owner-managers take to actively embed their values within their organisations, specifically how values owner-managers transpose their values into the culture, norms and practices of the firm, while also providing insight into the barriers they face within such attempts to embed these values.

Extant research on values in the small and medium sized context has drawn on theories including Schwartz’s values wheel (Schaefer et al., 2020), while tangential work on values has, for example, drawn on identity theory (Kiefhaber et al., 2020). Locke’s work and theory is of distinct relevance to SME values and the phenomenon of owner-manager values embedding. Previous research, in drawing on theory from fields including marketing or psychology, such as the work of Schwartz, which typically defines values to be broadly static and universal entities, has often focused on gaining a perfunctory understanding of the nature of values or broad commitment to values and not their practice in context (Gorgievski et al., 2011; Jansson et al., 2017). By contrast, Locke’s work provides a framing which theoretically bridges the nature of values with their practice in context over time. Such a conceptualisation allows and accounts for the rich heterogeneity of the SME context and associated with this acknowledgement that within the SME setting, “ethics are not set in stone, they are situational—context and time specific…” (Vyakarnam et al., 1997, p. 1632). Organisational change is a key facet of SME life, with owner-managers facing both external challenges, such as firefighting of unexpected issues, and at times ethical pressure to consider and evaluate the means by which their values are enacted in practice (Oldham & Spence, 2022). Locke’s work validates the substantive and practical realities of values embedding where change, for instance in terms of the holder of values, unanticipated events and social forces, requires responsiveness and evaluation, which is composed of both explicit and rational reasoning alongside emotional and affective feeling and experience. It furthermore acknowledges the importance of values to social relationships and the creation of shared bonds and familiarity within social groups, a key consideration within the SME milieu where stakeholders are frequently physically close and bonds are cultured on the basis similarity and familiarity (Lähdesmäki et al., 2019).

Methodology

The research setting was the South West of England with the alcohol production sector and retail sector selected as sample sectors given the representativeness of the features of the region and their contrast. The retail sector has experienced significant commercial pressures and business closures; typically located further up the value chain, the alcohol production sector has had an influx of new entrants over the previous two decades.

Use of a selection of key words, including ‘brewery’, ‘vineyard’, ‘distillery’ for potential participants within the alcohol production sector, and ‘local retailer’, ‘small retailer’ or ‘independent retailer’ for the retail sector, combined with the key geographic terms including ‘South West’ or the name of key urban locations, were entered into online search engines. Such an approach was taken as many small businesses are often not registered with formal bodies, such as trade associations, particularly in the alcohol production industry where many businesses are relatively new entrants. This approach generated a list of around 200 potential participants whose websites were then screened to verify organisational size and the specific nature of business operations to ensure they fitted the sample criteria, for instance through verifying they were in fact a small not large business and that alcohol production or retailing was their primary purpose. Alongside this an emphasis was placed on identifying businesses of a range of different sizes, ages, locations (for example urban versus rural) and product types, such a wine, beer, cider, gin and other spirits within the alcohol production industry, and furniture, books, jewellery and food within the retail sector. Approximately 125 businesses were then approached by telephone with the primary researcher’s role as a university researcher explained alongside the aim of the research to gain a more in-depth understanding of the nature of small business values, including their role and day-to-day practice. Upon provisional agreement to participate, a follow up email was sent to the interviewee in question (typically the owner-manager), further explaining the purpose of the research, as well as details of ethical compliance in terms of data anonymity, consent and sensitivity to research participants. Given the strong local connectedness of many SMEs, as interviews were conducted a snowballing approach was further used to identify participants.

As a significant number of firms approached either declined to respond to communications or did not possess the time or inclination to get involved in the research, the final sample was composed of forty firms. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with founder or owner-managers, or in cases where they were unavailable, senior managers to speak on their behalf, drawing from a broad mix of firms in terms of geographic location, goods produced or sold and age (see Table 1. for interviewee demographics). The interviews lasted on average 50 min with 35 interviews carried out face to face and five undertaken over the phone or via a videoconferencing application. Small and micro firms (those in possession of 10–49 employees and fewer than 10 employees respectively (UK Government, 2022) were chosen for inclusion within the research sample. Medium sized firms (in possession of 50–250 employees) were excluded as prior research has suggested that they tend to resemble larger firms in terms of organisational structure, management and approach to ethics (Russo & Tencati, 2009). Interviews focused on gaining a contextualised insight into the nature, role and influence of owner-manager values. This was primarily achieved through obtaining an understanding of how the firm was founded, current operations, social responsibility practice and key stakeholder relationships before considering the nature of the owner-manager’s values, including how they manifest within the firm, the means by which they are actively embedded within the firm and the barriers faced therein.

Table 1 Overview of research participants
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Thematic coding was utilised to organise, categorise and analyse the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis “allows the researcher to see and make sense of collective or shared meanings and experiences” (Braun & Clarke, 2012, p. 57) to identify patterns of meaning that are of relevance to the focal phenomenon. Primarily, familiarity was gained with each transcript through manual transcription. Each transcript was subsequently uploaded to NVivo pro and an initial process of data-driven inductive coding was undertaken (Nowell et al., 2017) with the generation of initial codes based on a broad interest in the embedding of values within the organisation and the nature of these values. An iterative process of cycling between Locke’s values theory and data was then employed, with a second reading of each transcript resulting in the generation of new codes. This led to a pool of initial codes (see Fig. 1), relating to phenomena such as the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving consistent values practice and the role of financial resources and competing values frustrating the implementation of values. Analysis of these initial codes generated was then conducted to collate and identify patterns and interrelationships, to establish secondary themes encapsulating “the meanings conveyed by the codes” (Waeraas, 2022, p. 157). This allowed codes to be rolled into tentative secondary themes, through drawing inspiration from Locke’s conceptualisation of values. For example, through allowing emphasis and framing of groups of codes, such as those coalescing around the role of emotions and feeling, to be highlighted and therefore the nature of values embedding from an affective perspective as a secondary theme to be delineated, or attendance to the function of justification of values and their codification to allow discussion and sharing as a form of rational values embedding. By means of analysis of each of these themes alongside consideration of the raw data to ensure these themes sympathetically represented the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and to enable “the story or case to emerge from the data” (Williams & Moser, 2019, p. 52), two overall themes emerged. Specifically, secondary themes relating to embedding values in different ways over time were rolled into ‘Varied ongoing efforts to embed owner-manager values’ and those secondary themes relating to obstructions to values practices were rolled into to the overall theme: ‘Barriers to embedding’ (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Data structure

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To support the analysis of the values-embedding processes specific values were also noted and identified throughout the process of data collection and analysis. This took the form of coding explicitly expressed values, where respondents identified and discussed important values, through proactive namechecking such as sustainability, fairness and authenticity, as well as coding implicit values more covertly conveyed within reflections, justifications and description by interviewees, including localism, heritage and excellence (Waeraas, 2022). Firm websites were reviewed to verify the nature of values conveyed within interviews if expressed, as well as how such values were described. Such explicit and implicit values were then grouped and eight core values identified (see Table 2. For breakdown of values and examples of implicitly and explicitly expressed values within the interview data).

Table 2 Value types, embodied practices and theoretical conceptualisations
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Findings

Embedding Owner-Manager Values

Alongside specific practices and norms that participants regarded as the embodiment of values, including authenticity, localism and sustainability, which emerged from the data (see Table 2 for summary of key values, embodied practices and theoretical conceptualisation), participants also described more explicit steps they took to what, in the context of the paper, is defined as a process of embedding their values throughout their organisations. The stated intent behind such a process of embedding falls into the category of ensuring that their values were consistently practised and communicated through the organisation and these values, as understood by the owner-manager themselves, were shared with key stakeholder groups so as to explicitly lie at the heart of the firm’s norms, practices and processes. Such embedding practices took the form of rational values embedding, affective values embedding and building values-aligned relationships.

Rational Values Embedding

A number of owner-managers strove to implant values within their organisations via formal and explicit means, an approach typically reflective of the larger firm method where values are codified, communicated and embedded within rationalised organisational practices, structures and processes (Bourne et al., 2019). This form of values sharing was broadly inwardly focused and based on rational justification of the role of values, often in tandem with the sharing of experiences from owner-manager to employees to provide clarified expectations, norms and behaviours for employees and consistent values practice, for example that relating to the values of excellence and care (see Table 2). Explicit codification of values either within internal documents, including business plans and noticeboards, and on organisational websites to communicate these to employees was a key means by which owner-managers sought to achieve this. A brewery owner-manager noted the importance of such an approach to embedding excellence in the firm, which they considered to be “thoughtfulness and quality in everything we do”, particularly in emphasising the time and thought invested in making the right decisions as, “we will never make a decision just because it seems like a good idea or everyone else is doing it or it’s cool” concerning, for example which other businesses to collaborate with:

“We do have a set of values that we try to work to and when we have new people that start with us, on the first day, I will sit down with them and go through, ‘this is the vision which is on the website…’ Following on from that we do have values which we try to live by and run our business by and get across to our staff so that it permeates the whole business and it’s something that we are always working to.” (M22)

These codified values were further substantively utilised by some owner-managers to hold employees and themselves to account to ensure that they remained rooted within the business. This was apparent with regard to the value of care, conceptualised by one retailer as acting in a kind manner and avoiding harm and neatly encapsulated within the firm’s DBAD (Don’t Be A D**k) rule within its stated values:

“Having a clarified set of values makes a lot of decision-making an awful lot easier… It makes decision-making easy. It also makes discipline and grievance easy because usually whatever issues come up, there will be elements of your values that dictate what the most sensible way forwards is.” (M36)

As the owner-manager described, such an approach allowed the value of care to be embedded within the firm, exemplified by an instance where one employee began treating others in an uncaring and rude manner. In this case, the firm’s formalised values provided “a very useful document for stuff that would have been prevaricated” as it allowed the owner-manager to pull the employee up for not adhering to these values and ultimately empowered them to make a straightforward decision that the employee was not in fact adhering to these values and asking them to leave the firm as a result. While this form of more formalised values embedding is not commonly associated with the SME approach, some owner-managers within the sample emphasised the value of embedding values in such an explicit manner. Apparent within this approach was the notion that providing clear benchmarks in the form of explicit values was important to ensure that they were consistently practised across the organisation, even through serving as a reminder to owner-managers to incorporate these values within their decision-making.

Affective Values Embedding

Owner-managers further sought to embed their values by means of generating affective responses on the part of internal and external stakeholders via the sharing or communication of the experiential nature of specific values as they themselves understood or experienced them. Such a strategy was commonly intended to encourage stakeholders to don the outlook of the owner-manager and comprehend their understanding and lived experience of particular values, including the values of authenticity, localism and heritage. This commonly took the form of storytelling (Espedal & Carlsen, 2021) via exposure and immersion of stakeholders within the physical footprint of the firm to communicate the idiosyncrasies of the firm’s history, ethos and practices to generate a visceral understanding of specified values. One owner-manager related how storytelling and stakeholder immersion was conducted in relation to the value of localism, which (as commonly conceptualised across a number of firms) was conceived as connection to local ecosystems and an understanding of place, noting that when approached by potential stockists they responded by telling them:

“‘We would like you to come to the vineyard to see the vineyard, to see what we do, understand why the wine is the way it is’… So that they understand our story, so that they understand why the wine tastes the way it does, and that is really important to us… One of the systems of that living organism is the wine, the people who buy it and the people who drink it… It’s personal and also something which is very important to us. It’s about place.” (M10)

One owner-manager of a microbrewery who invited stockists to visit their production site to learn about the business and its products, noted that it allowed stakeholders to experience the realities of the business and values in action. In particular, through such visits the value of authenticity, in terms of providing an open and realistic picture of how the business functions on a day-to-day basis, how the firm was founded and the products were created and manufactured, could not just be told but shown via storytelling and ‘hands on’ involvement within the brewery:

“We’ve actually taken the time to ship their entire bar related teams, sometimes up to 12 people, over to the brewery and done a talk on how we produce beer, given them a whole backstory about us and the products… it really raises their impression of us as a company, and we achieve that in a completely authentic way, by inviting them to see that this is not a flashy place. It’s really pretty gritty in here; it never look smarter than this, it really can’t. In a couple of cases we’ve had them filling casks and things like that. So, they actually get really hands-on… When they think about the beer, in their minds they know where it was produced, they can picture the scale of it, they know there’s a real authenticity to it. It really is small, local production.” (M7)

This approach also empowered stakeholders, especially wholesalers or stockists, to communicate these values to those stakeholders once removed from the firm, such as their own customers, ensuring that the owner-manager’s values could accompany their products on their journey to the end consumer. Owner-managers also utilised company websites and social media accounts to expose stakeholders to and immerse them more implicitly in their values through generating a rich visual and textual narrative explaining the values, practices and day-to-day realities of life within the business. Practices included the sharing of pictures of staff, products, production processes and the physical footprint of the firm, such as land, buildings and machinery, often accompanied by the telling and re-telling of stories (Espedal & Carlsen, 2021) relating to the history, mission and beliefs underpinning these physical artifacts. For one owner-manager whose retail business was created on the back of a multi-generational farming business, the value of heritage expressed as commitment to understanding and preserving traditional practices through both telling stories and maintaining forms of action and commitments, was essential. The owner-manager emphasised the efforts being made to reignite practices and an ethos which had fallen by the wayside. By producing and retailing food for the local community in an environmentally friendly, responsible and un-intensive manner the firm was in the process of reestablishing its founding principles from the nineteenth century, but using a twenty-first century form of technology to embed and communicate the story of how they were seeking to accomplish this:

“With social media and stuff like that we have an opportunity to tell a lot of people about that story so that story doesn’t stop within our 150 acres… On Instagram I’m doing an A–Z of the business and last week was ‘E’ and we did environment and just talked about all the things we are doing in the farm shop. So, limiting our use of plastic, making sure the plastic we use is recyclable, solar energy…” (M39)

Beyond such rational and affective embedding of values, owner-managers also sought to utilise their stakeholder relationships to facilitate the embedding of their values.

Building Values-Aligned Relationships

To embed their values, some owner-managers counter-intuitively looked outside the firm to identify stakeholders with similar values with which to build relationships. This strategy was predicated on the notion that stakeholder relationships lie within the domain of the firm, thereby acknowledging the contextual and relational nature of their values and a pragmatic understanding that stakeholders can influence the extent to which their values were embedded within their organisations (Lähdesmäki et al., 2019). Such an approach is consonant with a stream of research on SMEs that has drawn on a stakeholder perspective to emphasize the salience of relationships with key stakeholders to the practice of social responsibility and social capital contributions, as well as firm survival (Ahmad et al., 2020; Russo & Perrini, 2010). Owner-managers regularly emphasised the importance of establishing long-term relationships predicated on shared values such as fairness, integrity and sustainability, despite the potential financial costs involved. One brewery owner-manager for example focused heavily on creating relationships on the basis of the value of fairness, regarded commonly across firms in the sample as operating in a collaborative and honest way to create mutually beneficial outcomes within stakeholder relationships. In doing so this allowed fairness to permeate relationships with suppliers and stockists, in terms of charging a fair price to both parties and providing longer term assurances in relation to loyalty with stakeholder groups:

“We aim to have a degree of transparency with our suppliers and customers. Being open about pricing structure, from raw materials to the markups we have, we work with our customers to get our pricing right, that works well. It’s about a certain amount of loyalty, you know regardless of price, recognising the challenges that we face, therefore sticking to suppliers that have the right ethos, not just about price. Working within a community and building a community of business that recognises those values matter…” (M30)

A number of participants pragmatically noted that the values of key stakeholders very tangibly allowed their own values to be embedded through empowering the firm to maintain integrity to their own values. In the case of jewellery, retailers having suppliers who shared their values translated into access to products which were responsibly sourced and not tainted by worker exploitation in markets where, in their view, unscrupulous suppliers operated that did not share their values:

“If you are looking for a particular product, you usually find that the product you are looking for they kind of have a similar outlook because that is what they do. Hand on heart, I cannot think of anybody that has fundamentally different ideas on something than we do, that we deal with... Pearl suppliers, if we have enquiries for pearls, we have got a Japanese company we deal with that are fantastic, lovely people. They are friendly, they are nice, they have an outlook that seems to align with ours.” (M38)

Furthermore, opportunities to learn and gain knowledge from stakeholders, such as neighbouring businesses, as well as gain support were a welcome biproduct of this building of such relationships. One owner-manager indicated that a benefit of sharing its firm’s site with another business with similar values was the extent to which it helped them embed the value of sustainability, considered to be a high level of eco-consciousness, within the firm. This especially related to the challenges the firm had faced in producing in a biodynamic way, which had presented difficulties in fruit production and was often difficult to obtain advice about. Having support from a firm which shared the firm’s ethos of producing high quality products in an eco-conscious manner allowed them to benefit via sharing knowledge regarding eco-friendly fruit production, such as how to circumvent the use of chemicals in the growing and production process, as well as providing important moral support when the firm ran into associated difficulties which affected the business:

“We follow the same kind of ideals… having the same ethos is brilliant… having someone to talk to who has knowledge, who understands and believes the same sorts of things as you—if you get stuck they can help you, is just amazing. It is quite tough doing it on your own.” (M10)

Overall, owner-managers expressed heavily favourable sentiment around the benefits of culturing relationships with stakeholders in possession of similar values and the positive implications of this for embedding their own values within their organisations.

Barriers to Values Embedding

In the course of seeking to embed their values, participants commonly noted the difficulties or hinderances that arose relating to a lack of understanding or knowledge of their values, a lack of resources or conflict between values. Such barriers reflect that values are inherently entwined within the context in which they manifest and that given such entwinement reflective and evaluative thought and action is routinely required in the form of evaluation and transvaluation on the part of social actors to respond to such changes (Locke, 1989a, 1989b). Importantly, such processes of evaluation are required to respond to fluid context where requisite trade-offs are an inherent element of values given alterations in context and individual experience.

Values Awareness

As Hatch and Schultz (2017) explore, values, particularly within firms with long organisational histories, may wax and wane over time with organisational members taking action to re-discover, renew or re-embed these obscured values. In such a vein, a number of participants commonly expressed that they did possess important values which played an important role affectively within their lives which they sought to embed within their firms. However, they further expressed either an inability to rationally articulate the specific nature of these values or that within the day-to-day prioritisation of business life explicit focus on their values went by the wayside. Such a paucity of values awareness frequently bore testament to owner-managers’ changing relationships with their values or individual values over time, notably their relative importance or a lack of personal focus on their values. One owner-manager of a relatively new business asked about their values expressed that:

“It’s really hard. It’s not something I’ve given an awful lot of thought to. It certainly wasn’t in the forefront of my mind when I was setting the business up. I just wanted to create a nice work environment for everybody and a business where we sold nice stuff to nice people.” (M18)

Lack of values recall and awareness was apparent in both instances where values were codified and uncodified and represented a key barrier to embedding values within the firm. This was apparent within some interviews where participants struggled to remember their values and chastised themselves for not being able to do so.

“So, we did have a set of values, she says, and it’s appalling that I can’t remember them all in detail. Why can’t I?!” (M11)

An absence of time and attention was often attributed to a lack of values recall and accompanying dearth of focus on ensuring they were sufficiently embedded within the organisation. Participants nonetheless did emphasise that they did at times take steps to tend to their values. One owner-manager of a family-firm with a 155-year history in the retail industry noted that the firm did have a distinct set of values. Through discussing the origins, history and culture of the firm they noted that the research interview itself had proved beneficial in terms of them considering their own values and ensuring that they remained in sight:

“It’s actually just good for me to just air some things. You sometimes forget stuff, not your raison d’être, but your core values… and sometimes just articulating it actually just focuses your mind a bit more. I’ve got to try a bit harder on that and not lose sight of it.” (M37)

The owner-manager for example self-deprecatingly acknowledged that they struggled to maintain awareness of care as a value, particularly towards employees, noting that they were “not brilliant at it, but engaging with the staff, supporting them, acknowledging them is really important”. Nonetheless, they made an ongoing effort to keep the value in mind and practise it such as through keeping a list of the birthdays and anniversaries of their employees on the desk so as to remind them to send them a text message at the appropriate time, as well as through having an ‘open door’ policy to allow employees to talk to them about personal matters, such as financial issues, whenever they felt like it.

Resource Hindrances

As indicated within previous SME ethics research (cf. Oldham & Spence, 2022), a lack of organisational resources is often a key determinant of or hinderance to ethical or socially responsible practice. A number of participants noted how fidelity to their values in the short term translated into higher costs or opportunity costs for the firm, for instance as they sought to avoid overcharging customers or selling them products they did not want or need. As such, these resource hinderances often compounded particularly in the short term low values awareness through distracting away from values towards more commercially centred concerns. Rational reflection, valuation and evaluation by owner-managers of the financial cost and risk as well as investments in time and knowledge associated with more deeply embedding values commonly overtook the emotional desire to practise each value to its fullest.

“I’d just love to put heat recovery systems in… It’s just for what we could do with it at present, it’s really not financially viable. It would cost us a fortune to put it in and we wouldn’t get any money back from it. Really, we’d be paying money for it.” (M25)

Accordingly, judgement and evaluation of how values were or could be embedded and the associated resource based constraints was undertaken on a regular basis. Contemplation and analysis of the costs of seeking to embed values more fully was frequently evident in relation to the value of sustainability, where mitigating environmental impact invoked high financial costs. Such evaluation required balancing strong affective urges to embed the value of sustainability as fully as possible within the organisation with the pragmatic and rationalised reality of the implications of doing so both in an immediate financial sense and in terms of how this may impact the embedding of other values, such as care towards employees.

“…there are two schools of thought—whether or not you just go eco-friendly with everything and to hell with the implications of that come next month. A customer comes in and can’t find whatever they like, the thing they do like is now more expensive, they don’t want to buy it because it’s more expensive... It’s hard to sort of conflict between what you want to sell, what you can sell, because we could sell more eco-friendly stuff, there is stuff on the market, it’s not financially viable.” (M15)

Similarly, one head winemaker expressed the cost barriers associated with the vineyard potentially becoming organic for environmental-related reasons and the knock-on effect that would likely have on customer demand:

“I mean you can probably go organic but then that becomes less commercially viable. From an acre of grapes you might get a ton, whereas we are producing 3 to 4 tons, and you can’t suddenly slap three times the value on a bottle of wine to hold that label.” (M26)

Resource based barriers to fully embedding values were frequently regarded by owner-managers as subject to change over time, for example as input costs for sustainable products reduced or consumer tastes changed, and many expressed the sentiment that the emotional and rational motivation for embedding and practising each of their values would become aligned.

Competing Values

Concern related to the costs and limited resources available to fully embed values within organisations was repeatedly intensified by the incompatibility of certain values at times and the perceived trade-offs between such competing values. Explicit understanding and consideration of values, specifically their contextualised meaning, further exacerbated such issues where owner-managers sought to grasp on to multiple ‘slippery’ values that could fall by the wayside in the midst of such complex decision-making. Such instances led to a practical need to consider the interchangeability between values through decision-making around sacrificing elements of how values would ideally be embedded to try and maintain integrity while at the same time seeking to balance the affective impact of values with rational justification and evaluation of responses and potential courses of action. Examples of this in practice typically manifested in conflict between values that had arisen through unpredictable events. In one emotive example, a respondent discussed a mix-up by an employee related to a memorial product that the firm produced (containing the ashes of a deceased relative) where the incorrect remains had been sent to a family:

“There was one occasion when one of our makers… She confused two peoples’ ashes and sent somebody that she shouldn’t have done somebody else’s relative… and I’m still to this day not entirely sure how that occurred, and I could’ve said let’s not tell anybody anything…” (M36)

This had led to difficult conflict between balancing and reconciling the firm’s abstract codified values with their emotionally laden and conflictual presence in reality as they had arisen within the relationship between the firm and two customers and the owner-manager and the employee. The owner-manager related the need to try and balance the values of honesty on the one hand, in the form of transparency and avoidance of untruths, and care towards the customer through avoidance of distress and looking out for stakeholders on the other, as well as the need to balance the two with integrity. Through a process of rational and reflective evaluation, which entailed considering the potential responses to try and resolve the issue and their impact on each of the values involved, the owner-manager had sought to balance within the context of the issue these countervailing values. In response, the owner-manager decided to simultaneously sacrifice elements of both values, by ensuring the employee in question honestly confessed the mix-up to the customer who had been sent the incorrect product, but also telling a ‘white lie’ to the other customer to avoid distress and to remedy the situation practically.

Competing values were also present on a more personal basis for owner-managers where discord arose between values spanning personal and professional domains, a pertinent concern given blurred lines between work and home life especially as a result of a lack of physical separation and the associated practice of the values in terms of time commitment, responsibility within relationships and business outcomes. As one co-owner-manager of a micro-cider business expressed, it was essential that along with their co-owner-manager they found a balance between values running through their personal and professional lives. In particular, how they sought to remain faithful to emotionally laden, relational values of loyalty and care within their professional relationships, such as customer relationships, and personal relationships with spouses and children. Alongside this, maintenance of these values intersected with further values including authenticity and excellence in terms of ‘being themselves’ both in the workplace and in their personal lives and running their business to a high standard and producing quality products:

“There’s no point in being so super ethical that it makes a rancid product that no one wants to buy and, vice versa, for us even if it was really successful but we couldn’t sleep at night because of guilt, that wouldn’t work either. It’s finding a balance between absolute premium product without the detrimental effects on the surroundings, ourselves, our family lives. You have to be proud of every angle of what you do rather than sell your soul and make some money.” (M5)

The owner-manager discussed the difficulties of balancing their personal life and values, especially as a parent, with the demands of running their business in the way they believed it ought to be run. Such competition between values has no clear answer or remedy but required the owner-manager to try to continuously balance these values through working late into the evening while avoiding significant business expansion which might result in sacrifice of their family-oriented values.

Such instances highlighted the emotional versus rational struggle between maintaining values equally and practically being obliged to make sacrifices when embedding and practising values where situational, practical and relational factors provide emotional resonance to values and complexified issues. However, such competing values often triggered nuanced and imaginative decision-making on the part of owner-managers in order for solutions to be attained which sought to balance such competing or conflicting values.

In summary, lack of values awareness, resource hinderances and competing values all represented key barriers to the embedding of owner-manager values within the SME context, with such barriers compounding one another in practice. Considered contemporaneously these barriers point to the fluidity of values and the need for evaluation and reflexivity when difficult decisions and trade-offs arise when values are being embedded.

Variegated Values Embedding

Drawing on Locke’s view of values as fluid and processual in nature, principally through considering the role of reflexivity and evaluation of values over time, the findings of this research indicate that values embedding can be considered in an analogous manner as an ongoing and fluid process that occurs over time. Accordingly, the outcomes of such embedding processes varied within and between firms from the perspective of key decision-makers.

Through a strong and continual emphasis on rational values embedding via B-Corp accreditation and a sustainability report in tandem with building values-aligned relationships, one small brewery (M24) emphasised the high values awareness apparent within the firm, pointedly in relation to the value of sustainability, especially by means of strongly balancing it against associated resource hindrances. The owner-manager emphasised that sustainability was a highly embedded value, inculcated within and consistently present throughout the organisation’s practices, communications and culture, noting for example a plethora of sustainability practices, including solar generation, rainwater harvesting, plastic reduction and organic production. The owner-manager of the firm noted the importance of continually enhancing the embeddedness of the value of sustainability in particular within the business.

“We have an economic ambition, but in trying to do things the right way. It’s also about trying to build social and environmental capital… So in the way that we do things, can we cut down the amount of energy we use, whether it’s through a bit of heat recovery or looking at solar… We are starting to at least measure what we’re doing and use that as a benchmark to improve.”

By contrast, one small brewery (M7) reflected that despite a commitment to the value of sustainability, and heavy emphasis on affective values embedding through significant face-to-face contact and communication, it was not as highly embedded across the business as possible. While some sustainability practices were present within the firm, such as upcycling of waste materials, production of vegan beers and re-use of casks, dealing with resource-based barriers was an ongoing task and rational values embedding was something which the owner-manager did not regard as worthwhile. Importantly, such rational values embedding from the perspective of the owner-manager might impinge on another key value: authenticity.

“Honestly, we could probably do better for our own sake in pushing that kind of thing [sustainability]… We don’t have a web page that says: ‘our environmental policy’. Maybe we should, but I think that’s something that we tend to communicate more face to face… So, we don’t in a formal way shout about that, we do it hopefully in a more authentic one-by-one way.”

Such professed disparate levels of embedding were equally apparent with regard to the value of excellence. One small jewellery retailer (M33) strongly emphasised the extent to which excellence was embedded throughout their entire business:

“When I came in, I wanted to be the leader and that’s what kept us going… That goes through all my staff, so they’re out talking to people, we are the best in the city… We do give the best service. If we can’t do something then no one can.”

The owner-manager stressed the role of rational values embedding in the form of formal communication of the value both internally and externally, affective values embedding through the levels of service and ambience of the firm’s retail locations and building values-aligned relationships through avoiding any lack of values awareness and high levels of value embedding. Such embedding had led to the firm’s high quality products and customer service being recognised by winning a number of prestigious awards for design and customer service as well as consistently high customer ratings and reviews.

In opposition to this, the part-owner of one small brewery (M23) discussed the journey of values embeddedness the firm has been on regarding the value of excellence. In particular, how the value has not always been well embedded within the firm, with little active values embedding being attempted and a lack of commercial and technical knowledge when the business was in its infancy, leading to delivery at times of low quality products and customer service levels.

“We did struggle with things like quality control and things like that… We had a particularly bad batch of beer and even those customers ringing me up and saying ‘**** we’re so sorry, I know this is not what you want to hear, but the beer’s not good, mate, you need to come and take it out.’”

However, through the process of merging with another brewery, the firm acquired greater resources, which combined with greater affective and rational values embedding had allowed the firm to enhance the embeddedness of excellence throughout the firm in terms of quality and innovativeness of products as well as the levels of service provided to commercial partners. In summary, the confluence and combination of attempts to embed values and barriers faced therein resulted in contrasting levels of value embeddedness from the perspective of owner-managers between firms and within firms over time, constitutive of an adjustive process of embedding occurring.

Discussion and Contributions

This research sought to gain a more nuanced understanding of how owner-managers embed their values within their organisations. The results indicate that owner-managers utilise three key means—rational values embedding, affective values embedding and building values-aligned relationships—to actively embed their values within and throughout their organisations and key stakeholder relationships. In doing so the research has conversely identified a number of barriers, namely lack of values awareness, resource hinderances and competing values that owner-managers face in embedding their values.

Enhancing Understanding of Owner-Manager Values

Through engaging with the work of Locke, notably his acknowledgement of the multifaceted nature of values, especially their rational, affective and relational features, as well as the processes of valuation which accompany their practice, embedding of owner-manager values in the SME context is conceptualised as fluid and bound by the limitations and opportunities of time and place (Locke, 1989b). Drawing on Locke’s theoretical perspective values become realised and ‘real’ through practice and the forging of shared experience, which may take a wide variety of forms including communication of values, associated practices or more tangible activities, such as philanthropy or environmental management. Such a conceptualisation views transmission and embedding of values as heavily entwined, complementary activities with such a dualism between communication and practice broken down. Three main implications for research and theory within the realm of small business values and ethics are drawn from the research. First, the previous literature has frequently either not addressed how values are embedded within SMEs or intimated that values are relatively simply and easily embedded and transposed into practice (Luederitz et al., 2019), such as via owner-manager decision-making or role modelling (von Weltzien Hoivik & Melé, 2009). By contrast, this research evidences that owner-managers cannot simply ‘upload’ their values in a one-off manner into the culture, practices and stakeholder relationships of SMEs, especially as firms grow and change over time, but instead that they seek to embed and inculcate their values through a variety of means and as part of an ongoing process. For example, owner-managers may take regular and ad hoc steps to embed their values, for instance in the form of inducting new employees into the firm’s codified values, inviting stakeholders for site visits to immerse them in and story tell the values of the firm, curating social media content, or locating and building relationships with stakeholders in possession of similar values. Importantly, however, owner-managers may simultaneously face significant barriers to values embedding on experiencing a lack awareness of their values, resource based barriers and conflict between values necessitating (re)evaluation of values and associated decision-making (Locke, 1989a). Second, despite some research which has considered the role of stakeholders in relation to values within SMEs (cf. Lähdesmäki et al., 2019; Miller & Besser, 2000) and broader work on ethics in SMEs which has foregrounded the salience and influence of stakeholders (Russo & Perrini, 2010; Sen & Cowley, 2013), much previous research has intimated that, given their station, owner-managers have almost absolute power to embed their values. It has thus often underacknowledged the impact and importance of social relationships to values (Washington, 1994a) as well as the practical need for the role of stakeholder relationships to be considered and stakeholder buy-in to be attained to successfully embed values. This research extends such a perspective through providing further empirical evidence that owner-managers do both acknowledge the worth of stakeholder relationships built on values as well as seeking to actively build and maintain such relationships. For example, with wholesalers or other intermediaries who may act as conduits for owner-manager values. Similarly, with employees whose buy-in may be required to ensure these values are enacted consistently and importantly in the manner in which owner-managers desire. In this instance, and from a practical standpoint, such values alignment can be checked for during recruitment interviews. Third, as Locke argues, values are inherently bound to the attitudes and experience of individuals and are thus tethered to temporal and spatial social context. This research, through providing insight into owner-management conceptualisation of a range of values alongside embodied practices associated with these values, illuminates the salience of context to the conceptualisation and practice of values, something which has been broadly overlooked within previous research. In particular, as it has implied either explicitly or implicitly that owner-managers have common values (Hammann et al., 2009), as demonstrated by research which has categorised owner-managers by value orientation (Schaefer et al., 2020), and by extension that common shared conceptualisations of these values persist across time and space. This research evidences that greater account is required for the fact that owner-managers may consider and understand keystone values such as fairness, authenticity and sustainability to mean very different things. Notably, a range of key factors, including family influence in the firm, sectoral norms or other professional experience are likely to shape how and why owner-managers seek to embed and practise ostensibly the same values heterogeneously, leading to, for instance, very different outcomes for key stakeholder groups.

Through considering values embedding in the SME context, this research contributes to a stream of research that has taken a more practice-orientated approach to understanding how values ‘come to be’ within organisations via the actions and agential work of organisational members (Espedal & Carlsen, 2021; Gehman et al., 2013). In doing so, it provides two main implications for the broader business ethics literature. First, it evidences the work undertaken by organisational members within for-profit organisations to embed values. A corollary of this is the need to translate the practice-based and contextually nuanced approach to studying values that has been undertaken within the not-for-profit sector (Espedal & Carlsen, 2021; Vaccaro & Palazzo, 2015; Wright et al., 2021) more extensively into the for-profit sector to better understand the values work and embedding undertaken therein (cf. Chatterjee et al., 2021). Pointedly, within the multi-national corporation context. Second, while drawing further attention to the aspirational work by organisational members to embed and sustain values, it departs from previous studies through evidencing the hinderances at play that constrain such efforts, for example in the form of low values awareness or conflicting values. Gaining greater comprehension of these is critical given the associated knock-on effects for values practices more broadly, as well as associated corporate social performance within the context of the for-profit sector.

The Work of Alain Locke

Alongside the contributions that this research has sought to make to the field of social responsibility and ethics, particularly with respect to SMEs, it also highlights the absence of engagement with the work of Alain Locke (cf. Locke, 1917, 1989a, 1989b)—not only within the field of business ethics, but more broadly within the field of management studies. Although Locke’s theory of values dovetails with recent work which has sought to gain a more holistic understanding of values in practice and agentic action of social actors in sustaining values (Gehman et al., 2013; Wright, 2023), it provides opportunities for expanding such a perspective. Notably, through acknowledging the multi-faceted nature of values, for example through characterising them as beliefs that can be both felt and rationalised, Locke’s work provides opportunities to bridge work on values that regards them as abstract principles (Crossan et al., 2013; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) and that which takes more of a practice-based approach (Vaccaro & Palazzo, 2015). Further to this, Locke’s appreciation of the need to reconsider and revaluate values over time by means of engagement in transvaluation (Locke, 1989a) provides fecund territory for exploring more detailed and longitudinal forms of values practice that occur in organisations and how and why these change over time. Locke’s rich cannon addresses and has the potential to contribute to many key themes and debates within the field beyond those related to values, including those concerning organisational inequality, discrimination and decolonisation (Muzanenhamo & Chowdhury, 2023). Locke was at the forefront of an intellectual tradition which elevated the importance of culture in explaining discriminatory and prejudicial practices, primarily in the form of ‘race creeds’ based on false beliefs regarding different social groups (Locke, 1992). Through taking such a cultural view, Locke’s  work provides potential avenues for research investigating and explaining current discriminatory modalities within organisations as well as that which seeks opportunities for dismantling such assumptions and practices. Exploration of Locke’s work and the potential theoretical contributions they contain thus represents a valuable opportunity for the field of business ethics.

Implications for Practitioners and Policymakers

The implications for practitioners, notably owners and managers of SMEs, are that greater explicit consideration and communication of their values may allow greater embedding within the culture, norms and practices of the firm. Although the ability and value of explicit ethics and social responsibility formalisation has been critically discussed in previous research (cf. Oldham & Spence, 2022), a number of respondents noted the benefit that taking even simple steps, such as gaining personal clarity over their values, explaining values to new members of staff during onboarding or enshrining values within written form to provide guidance to employees in decision-making, had brought to the firm. This may further allow clearer values communication to external stakeholders, such as customers, the local community or competitors, as well as yield less complex decision-making when trade-offs between values and scarce resources are required. While such an approach may not be suitable or appropriate for many firms (cf. Fassin, 2008), in some contexts increased formalisation may prove beneficial. For example, when SMEs experience growth and as the influence of the owner-manager accordingly diminishes as a result of the acquisition of new members of staff and greater decentralisation of decision-making.

From the perspective of policymaking this research evidences that owner-managers are often stymied in attempts to embed their values, for example because of complex trade-offs between values and precious organisational resources. Enhanced support of both practical and knowledge-related means could help unlock latent ambition and motivation of SMEs to contribute more significantly to sustainable development. Practical assistance, such as financial incentives to transition to renewable energy usage or localised economic investment, or knowledge-related assistance, such as that concerning cognisance of ethical and sustainable issues and associated decision-making, could help to remove the barriers that owner-managers face in seeking to realise their values-driven ambition and purpose for their firms.

Limitations and Future Research

This research was limited to one region of the United Kingdom, drew participants from two sectors and only captured a static snapshot of values embedding from the perspective of owner-managers. Supplementary research could explore how the embedding of values, and the associated opportunities and challenges therein, evolves over time, for example as the firm grows or expands its areas of business activity. Importantly, it could examine the influence of employees in sustaining or disrupting values embedding in the form of role-modelling the practice of values or bringing different values or conceptualisations of values into the firm. Employee perception of embedding practices, the nature of values (such as authenticity, fairness and sustainability) as well as their relative efficacy in terms of facilitating the consistent communication and practice of values could also be investigated alongside additional embedding practices that employees observe owner-managers to be enacting. Future research could also take a more longitudinal approach to investigate how processes of valuation associated with values, including trade-offs between scarce organisational resources and other values, unfold as well as the impact of different embedding practices in terms of their impact. Underpinning many of these future research opportunities is the role of values communication in SMEs, and more broadly ‘corporate social responsibility talk’, and the motivation of firms to engage with such communication and the contrasting approaches they pursue.

Concluding Remarks

This paper has identified how owner-managers seek to actively embed their values within their organisations and the barriers they face therein, expanding previous discussion which has been limited to the role of owner-manager personal decision-making and role modelling. Through drawing on Alain Locke’s theory of values, it demonstrates that such embedding is a fluid and ongoing process that requires negotiation of both organisational and moral constraints which may lead to varying levels of values embeddedness. At a broader level it emphasises the importance of acknowledging the specific and context-bound nature of values when examining the means by which organisational members seek to embed and sustain values, for example via values work. The paper concurrently highlights the underusage of Alain Locke’s work within the field of business ethics and its potential utility in research and theorising values amongst other critical issues.