The Values Crossroads - Executive Summary
How many students’ unions are consciously working to reinforce certain values in their members?
By explaining how values work and drawing on examples from trade unions and the international
development sector, it’s possible to illustrate the importance of consciously working to strengthen
certain types of values in our memberships.
The Development Sector
In March 2011, Martin Kirk (Oxfam) and Andrew Darnton (Bond) published a paper - Finding
Frames: New ways to engage the UK public in global poverty. The basic argument was that NGOs
and charities have created a ‘chequebook relationship’ between their members and poverty. In
order to raise more money, Oxfam and other organisations have turned the public demand to Make
Poverty History (MPH) into a transaction – ‘you give money, we end poverty’.
Alongside this, Kirk and Darnton described how technological developments facilitate a “model of
public engagement called ‘cheap participation’, characterised by low barriers to entry, engagement
and exit – all of which focuses an organisation’s efforts on the breadth rather than depth of
membership engagement.
The biggest problem for NGOs is that ‘poverty is political’, and therefore to successfully end
poverty, they need their members to act politically together. However, Kirk and Darnton’s report
used psychological research to explain how treating members as consumers and focusing on
outputs over outcomes, they were appealing to values that encouraged the exact opposite
behaviour.
Working with Values
There is a vast body of psychological research evidencing that values influence how we treat each
other1, the environment2, our well-being3, our life choices4 and politics5. As Schawrtz’s Values
Wheel (Figure 1) shows, some values are associated with intrinsic goals and some with extrinsic
goals. “Intrinsic values focus on compassion and autonomy: values generally more inherently
rewarding to pursue.”i For example, someone with strong intrinsic values such as equality or unity
with nature (universalism) is more likely to volunteer or cycle to work. “Extrinsic values on the
other hand are about competition and power, centred on external approval or rewards.”ii For
example, someone with strong extrinsic values such as wealth or social status (power and
achievement) is more likely to act dishonestly.
1
See: Empathy, Sheldon & Kasser (1995). Machiavellian behaviour, McHoskey (1999). Social Dominance Orientation; prejudice and discrimination,
Duriez et al. (2007). Roets et al. (2006). Luthar (2007). Cooperation vs. competition Sheldon et al. (2000). Anti-social behaviour McHoskey (1999).
Affiliation and community vs. “exchange relationships” Kasser et al (2007)
2
See: Concern about effects of environmental damage on other people, species, and generations (vs. self) Schultz et al. (2005).
Sustainable (and cooperative) resource management Sheldon and McGregor (2000)
3
See: Life satisfaction; self-actualisation; emotions; depression and anxiety; personality disorders Richins & Dawson (1992); Kasser & Ryan (1993,
1996); Sheldon & Kasser (1995); Schor (2004); Cohen & Cohen (1996); Bauer et al 2012
Smoking & alcohol use Kasser & Ryan (2001); Williams et. al. (2000)
4
See: Music tastes Gardikiotis and Baltzis (2011). Career choices Sagiv (2002); Knafo (2004). Civic and political engagement Radkiewicz (2008).
Who we vote for Barnea and Schwartz (2011). Who we marry Rohan and Zanna (1996)
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Parental leave and advertising to children Kasser (2011). Trust in institutions Devos et al (2002). Gender equality Schwartz (2009). Right-wing
authoritarianism Feather and McKie (2012). Militarism Cohrs (2007)
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Fig.1 Shwartz’s Values Wheeliii
Through research, NUS found students at Kings College London Students’ Union KCLSU who had
strong intrinsic values more likely to believe the students’ union should campaign for change than
those with strong extrinsic values. Students with stronger intrinsic values were also more likely to
have actively taken part in a campaign. So if a campaign aims to change the opinion and actions of
our members, public, government or businesses, one of the ways to do this is to strengthen the
values associated with that attitude, goal and behaviour.
Psychological research showsiv that our values aren’t static and can become temporarily engaged
by external stimuli. For example, if we’re at a music festival we might act more hedonistically or
reading certain newspapers might increase our levels of prejudice. A bit like muscles, through
repeated engagement our values can be strengthened over time and become dominant.
These understandings were crucial to Kirk and Darnton’s critique. The goals of their campaigns
were entirely intrinsic; it was about global justice, equality and solidarity (Universalism). However
the way campaigns like MPH were conducted: using celebrity, holding pop concerts, selling branded
merchandise and emphasising the need for fundraising - primarily engaged extrinsic values,
suppressing the intrinsic values that their campaign was founded upon.
Fig 2.
v
The Public Institute Research Centre (PIRC), who have helped develop and populate this approach
use the diagram in Figure 2 to discuss intrinsic and extrinsic values in action. Arguably what the
development sector needed was to engage Common-interest values to empower a mass movement
of people to come together to build long-term, transformational change. But too often they
engaged Self-interest values, turned their members into financial supporters and used the money
to pay professionals to lobby for incremental change.
Trade Unions
LSE professor Hyman argues, as their membership began to fall sharply in the mid-eighties, many
trade unions sought new means of influence, a “new realism”vi took hold based on partnership with
employers instead of opposition. But by swapping utopian inspiration for new realism, and focusing
on improving the material conditions of their members’ oppression rather than building a broad
struggle for a more equal society, trade unions risk losing touch with their founding values
For example, the messages that trade unions use to recruit new members now typically engage
extrinsic values by appealing to self-interest. The reasons given to join a trade union are ‘to earn
more money’, ‘get more training’ and ‘get more holidays’.
While acknowledging the many challenges the trade union movement has faced, the adoption of
this ‘new realism’ also has profound implications for how trade unions are understood to act in
society. As if trade unions are understood to promote the self-interest of their members over the
common interest of society, then public sector strikes are thought of as selfish, greedy - a private
interest group acting irresponsibly at the public’s expense. A trade union becomes yet another
lobby group, scrambling to assert their self-interest in the “me, me, me” society.
The Values Crossroads
Fig 3.
The values crossroads facing students’ unions is shown in figure 3. Along the y-axis is the students’
unions focus on acting in the self-interest of individual members at one end to the common interest
of society at the other. Along the x-axis is the role of students in delivering this work, from passive
alienation at one end to deep engagement at the other.
•
In the bottom right segment, students’ unions operate like the NGOs and charities Kirk and
Darnton identified with a ‘mile wide and inch deep’ approach to membership engagement.
Although these organisations have intrinsic goals they often engage extrinsic values to fund
their ‘professional protest’ model acting to alienate the membership.
•
In the bottom left segment, students’ unions act for not with student to ensure a return on
their individual members’ investment by assuring the quality of their ‘student experience’.
They have a strong emphasis on customer service and employability. Representation is a
function of quality assurance rather than inclusiveness or democracy.
•
In the top left segment, students’ unions operate like the trade unions Hyman identified
who act to engage their members in improving the material conditions of their experience
in partnership with the institution. So although members are engaged, decisions are made
on the basis of education as a privilege which functions to increase the value of an
individual’s labour within a job market.
•
In the top right segment, students’ unions act like social movements making, “collective
challenges (to elites, authorities, other groups or cultural codes) by people with common
purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents and authorities.”vii
It is here that students’ unions challenge the neoliberal logic of universities and colleges,
using participatory democracy to identify the common interest and the collective power of
the members to achieve it.
The marketisation of the education sector has permeated universities and colleges with
individualism, the logic of self-interest and the extrinsic values of the competitive economy. In
contrast, unions are founded upon collectivism, the common interest, sharing and equality. As
research at Kings College London Students’ Union and elsewhere shows, the values associated with
this sort of behaviour (cooperation, political engagement and volunteering) are intrinsic values. If
they choose to operate in the exclusive, self-interest of students as students then they risk being
perceived by both members and wider society as a private lobby group, interested only in the
furtherance of their privileged members’ interests6. However, if they use messages that strengthen
and engage intrinsic values, students’ unions can empower their members to take collective action
and create real transformational change.
i
Public Interest research centre, (2011), ‘The Common Cause Handbook’
ii
Public Interest research centre ibid
iii
Schwartz, S.H. (1992). ‘Universals in the content and structure of values: theoretical advances and empirical
tests in 20 countries.’
iv
Public Interest research centre ibid
v
Sanderson, B. (2014) ‘How we engage with others, a brief guide to frames’
vi
Hyman, R. (2004) ‘The Future of Trade Unions’ in Anil Verma and Thomas A. Kochan (eds) (2004) Unions in
the 21st Century
vii
Tarrow, S. (2011)‘Power in Movement Social Movements and Contentious Politics’
6
Arguably, we cannot expect society to pay for tertiary education if this education serves only to advance the self-interest of an already privileged
social elite