Sensemaking to Define Organizational Values and Assess Organizational Performance

Abstract

The Jewish Middle School of Nashville (JMS) is a unique micro school with a dual mission: to extend Jewish education into middle level grades (5-8) and provide excellent education to adolescents of all backgrounds in the Nashville area. After only a few years of operations, the organization has undergone many fundamental and growth-based changes, possibly clouding the organization's core values. This quality improvement Capstone Project sought to identify underlying values that drive daily operations and to understand the beliefs and assumptions of the organization's multiple stakeholder groups. Through a mixed methods design, four findings emerged: there are eight core values which underly daily operations, there is high stakeholder involvement at JMS, most values align across stakeholder groups, and JMS measures its performance in contemporary, pro-social measures in addition to traditional, input-output measures.