Alignment of employees’ competencies with espoused organizational values

Abstract Building on previous values- and competencies-related scholarly research, in this paper we aimed to explore the relationship between espoused organizational values and competencies. We drew on LinkedIn data and focused on the top ten companies with “the best LinkedIn company pages” according to the annual #BestofPages contest launched by LinkedIn. The analysis revealed that values emphasis varied between individual companies and that only one company, the winner of the best LinkedIn company page context, had employees’ competencies fully aligned with the espoused organizational values. From the scholarly perspective, this research offers a piece of empirical evidence on the emphasis placed on espoused values in international organizations and provides a nontraditional approach for understanding competencies almost in real-time, which was labeled by previous scholars as a difficult problem. The analysis also helps to shed light not only on the existing versus needed/wanted competencies or their gaps but also provides an alternative approach to understanding how the competencies can mirror organizational values, evolve with them over time, and be better aligned to help organizations achieve their strategic aims. This is the practical contribution of this study.