This paper seeks to advance the study of organizational values by analyzing the role of values in a Danish political party called The Alternative, a party claiming to be guided by values rather than ideology. Inspired by recent work in organizational psychology, I group The Alternative’s values into two categories: vision values and humanity values. Through an empirical investigation, I show how the vision values encourage members to take initiative in realizing their own political ideas, while the humanity values encourage them to remain morally inclusive towards people with different views. The combination of vision and humanity values allows The Alternative to maintain commitment from members who might otherwise feel marginalized by the emergence of dominant ideas within the party. The paper’s contribution consists in highlighting the importance of using qualitative methods to study how values influence commitment and to expose the political dimension of this relationship.
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Emil Husted (2018) studied this question.