Hester Paanakker

Values provide a common understanding of the correct way of thinking and acting on strategic issues and opportunities facing organizations […]. Individual values that are congruent with an organization’s values may strengthen an employee’s identification with the organization and ultimately provide employees’ meaning, direction, and a sense of what is distinctive about the organization […]. In their empirical study on organizational value management, these authors found that formal management systems are important instruments for fostering value alignment in organizations (Paarlberg & Perry, 2007). Interestingly, they, too, emphasize the role of middle managers – not as sources of hybridity and conflict, but in terms of the key role they embody in using such formal management systems to integrate the organization’s strategic practices with employee values (Paarlberg & Perry, 2007, p. 387). In sum, theory on professional socialization implies that value perceptions of street-level craftsmanship are likely to be convergent. The assumption based on these insights would be that professionals do not only work within the same type of public service delivery and for the same type of beneficiaries, but are also actively socialized to adopt the same client logic, ideals and values. This would translate to the way they perceive frontline craft, irrespective of the exact position they hold. As such, it raises the question if, as a result of professional socialization, different levels in the institutional hierarchy are prompted to adopt highly similar value perceptions of street-level craftsmanship. 4.5 Values under Pressure in the Dutch Penal Sector This section briefly explains the public setting in which the research took place, and the role of values therein. In the Netherlands, the prison sector’s mission of “providing a safe and humane detention in which, together with chain partners and detainees, we work towards reintegration back into society” (Dutch Correctional Agency, 2009a, p. 10) articulates the three core values of humanity, security and reintegration. In many Western contexts, these three values are believed to represent the essence of detention, with the critical observation that, in practice, they exemplify a precarious balance as they can conflict in many respects (DiIulio, 1987; Liebling & Arnold, 2004; Molleman, 2014). 100 Chapter 4