The method of arrival at these responses was that all of the answers for each question were pooled. The values with the largest percentage of choices are those indicated above. The maximum number of times any value can be chosen is four.

This is a group with an average age of approximately forty. Nineteen were women, six were men. While culturally diverse, there were five team members (one male, four females) who were born in Mainland China.

It is argued that the values are cross-culturally and gender valid. Respondents to this survey reported gender and ethnicity, and the results showed slight shifts in emphasis based on culture and gender.

Women elected work as the most commonly selected value, and with a proportion slightly greater than the group as a whole. Men selected work slightly less than the group as a whole. Men selected being self at a higher rate than the group and more than their female counterparts. Confidence was selected more frequently by the male members of the team, as well as valuing new organizational structure.

Men and women both chose equality to the same degree, while female members chose wholeness slightly more than their male counterparts. Men tended to focus slightly more on security as a value then did women.

Within those team members (4 female/1 male) who were born in China, of those values with a clear majority, beliefs, family, and self-actualization were the most frequently chosen.

In this first audit, it appeared that this was a very cohesive group, the majority of whom tended to define themselves by their work. While job and financial security did appear as an issue, it did not appear to be an overriding one. Since this group worked together for years with little change, that is probably understandable. It is not surprising to see that issues around wholeness and learning were significant considering that this is a group working with the information field.

The second survey was conducted approximately one year after the first and approximately three years after project start-up. This was also at the beginning of the third phase. Implementation of the system had just been finished.

Noted changes included an increase (4%) in the work value, the appearance of wisdom as the most selected for two questions that originally been selected for security and being self. Learning also replaced vision as one of the values. Confidence replaced self-worth for one of the values.

While there were no major changes, the increase in confidence, the importance placed on learning, and the individual focus on the workplace did show small increases. Issues around security diminished slightly.

In the third survey, results were again very similar, although security began to increase (8%) again, while beliefs and work showed small decreases. In all three surveys, work and learning were the highest values, with confidence, equality, and self-actualization remaining close behind.

The second stage of this research involved getting deeper into the issues that might be confronting the team members. This was done during the third phase of the project and during the same time frame as the second values survey.

For this protocol, the hermeneutic, phenomenological method as described by Max van Manen was used. Four team members were interviewed in a nondirected fashion. The team members were volunteers, and the process was explained ahead of time. They were instructed that the conversation would be tape-recorded. They were also told that they would be asked only the initial question, "Tell me about your job."

The themes common to all team members included a lack of clarity around protocols, future direction, learning concerns, communication between team members, unclear priorities, complexity of the system, variety of the work involved, turf issues, and self-identification of members within the group and the group within the organization.

The group members interviewed included two men and two women. They were a diverse ethnic group. They all demonstrated a strong sense of belonging. The group is very much internally focused, trying to cut out clear priorities around turf, so issues of security and self-preservation do appear.

Learning and work were major values seen in these interviews as these individuals clearly defined themselves through their work, and their ability to increase understanding through additional learning opportunities and variety were clearly stated. The most common complaints referred to issues that blocked those learning opportunities.

In seeking to use this tool as an adjunct to the questionnaire, the issues around knowledge and learning were discovered. The issue specifically arose in the comment (made more than once) that "each person in the group has a specialty, which is both a positive and a negative. They don’t have time to share their expertise." There was a belief that information is finite. This has both a positive and a negative edge. While a commodity is highly prized, it can also be used as a weapon by withholding it from others. This concern appeared during the nondirected interviews, and was later confirmed to be a potential area of conflict within the group as a whole.

5. Conclusions and Discussion

Based on the theoretical model shown in figure #1 the structure of the organization is heavily influenced by the values themselves. The value attractors, through attraction or repulsion, are able to shape an organization. This is a theory that has been long held within organizational psychology as witnessed by the use of vision and mission statements, management by objective, total quality management, and so on, which are all ways of shaping organizational behavior based by what is important (what is of value).

In this retrospective study, the initial structure of the CHD group was poorly defined. There were a number of reasons why this was true, but primarily, it was a lack of clarity regarding what this new organization should look like. This proved to be a significant issue for the group, based on the phenomenological research conducted.

In the CHD study, structure was partly determined by selecting a group of people with strong and consistent values around their work and their predilection for learning. This happened because the person who hired all of these people had the same strong and consistent value system found in each of the staff members.

The strength by which values are held is another indicator that has meaning. By using a values survey, one gets some indication of value "strength" if a respondent selects a value the maximum number of times (4). Methods of correlating the total number of values chosen and the absolute strength by which those values are held would also be helpful (the timing aspect of the new survey adds significantly to this point).

It was also relevant to the CHD that each team member held a significant faith in his or her own competence. This was important because they were in a situation were people with weaker emphasis on confidence probably would not have remained. As stated earlier, even though these were people with long work histories within the parent corporation, it was made clear to them that these positions in this new organization were temporary, and that there was no guarantee that they would be moved into permanent positions. So, their own values around work/labor, learning, competence/confidence, self-actualization, and equality provided the value phase fields that served as the attractors that shaped the organization over its five year history. It is suggested here, however, that if these values had been better known and promoted early in the project, the disquiet that existed while issues were being resolved through evolution would have been virtually nonexistent.

Values also provide direction. The focus of this group towards proving itself, as demonstrated in their strong value system, provided the momentum to accomplish a task that was considered impossible by most of NSO. A project such as the CHD was projected to take ten years to implement using IT's projection. This project accomplished the actual implementation in three years and under budget.

The CHD project also demonstrated Kurt Lewin’s field theory in that the momentum towards the end goal diminished as the team got closer to that goal. Momentum came to a virtual standstill when the implementation was finished. Again, the momentum was an integral part of the values needed to accomplish the task (and thereby substantiating their individual values as knowledge workers). Once the task was finished, there was nothing left to prove, and energies turned inward.

So far, the description has been fairly linear, focusing on the values along the straight lines and containment noted by structure, direction, and momentum. The trajectory, however, was not so linear. The following figure gives a graphical representation of organizational dynamics and of the CHD project.

Stage A represents the near-to-equilibrium stage. For the CHD group, this would be the first year of the project. This was a time where stress was minimal; schedules were focused on learning skills based on database creation, transition management, and adult learning models. Each of these knowledge areas was taught by contractor specialists who were not part of the CHD group. Values that defined the project were an integral aspect of the individuals and the temporary project manager (who had hired the team). The charter of the group was clear, and perturbations from external and internal stimuli were quickly dampened. The project momentum was on a "fast track," per the organizational charter, and the direction was straight. There was also significant support from NSO that also managed to dampen perturbations from other groups within NSO.

Stage B was a major transitionary phase in that the original project manager left the organization (retired), and a new system manager was hired from outside NSO. Her value phase fields followed more "traditional" IT lines. This more traditional structure segmented learning (called "staging" in the IT world), so that no one knew the entire picture. This value was in direct conflict with the closely held CHD group value of shared learning. The change in managers and the value conflicts between the new manager and the group moves the group into stage C, one of wide oscillations in behavior and far-from-equilibrium.

If one were using the values-based model suggested, the problems mentioned so far could have been avoided and the group would still be in a near-to-equilibrium status. By being aware of the initial group value phase fields necessary for the task at hand, one could have promoted those values actively and openly within the group and within the cultural icons of the group, and by making sure that the new manager’s value phase fields were not in conflict with the groups’. Through use of the value auditing and interview, these issues could have been avoided.

The CHD group hit the interface between stages C and D approximately one and a half years into the project. The new manager resigned out of frustration and the computer software demonstrated a lack of ability to handle the size of the project. This required multiple rapid actions. First, the implementation needed to continue as far as it could while a newer version of the software was tested – a six month effort. Second, a new manager had to be selected.

By this time, the values-mapping protocol had been tried once and was suggested as a possible tool in assisting with mediating this issue. A third manager was hired who was in strong compliance with the CHD group’s value phase fields. He was also a long-term employee of NSO and shared the organizational goals described for the CHD group.

By focusing on the issues of knowledge and learning and self-actualization and work labor, and by making these prominent attractors to behavior as the group moved through the dynamical phase D, the group evolved into a different group. It was no longer a single-focused project team, but a versatile, knowledgeable, and flexible work team.

As stated earlier, a viable working model has to be dynamic, easily modifiable, easily updateable, and integrated into the reality of the systems perspective of organizations. In this one example, the model had not been developed, but the principles, which are somewhat intuitive, were enacted in the middle of the project.

The movement toward chaos, however, had already gained too much energy to stop. Had the model been in place at the beginning, it is possible that the outcome would have been entirely different and more reflective of the original project team. However, once the principles of the model were enacted through the application of attractors, the dynamics utilized assisted bifurcation points, and the desirable organization developed. The resultant CHD group was probably more flexible than the original team, even though they were the same people.

As noted by Deutsch, "Since the network of the human mind behaves with some degree of plasticity, it can change many of its operating rules under the impact of experience". One could not have forecast the final organization, but it is possible to move in a positive direction even without predictability. Through the application of positive attractors assisting dynamical bifurcations through the process of chaos, success can positively evolve.

Another way of understanding the dynamics is expressed in the following formula:

                                                                            N = tl = (I_h + I_c) s