A researchers contacted me and one of my colleagues from another faculty the other day. Some time ago she had fallen on the sidewalk and got pretty badly injured. Now she wanted to reach out and express her gratitude. Some students at our faculties had stopped and helped her, called for an ambulance, and waited with her.

I understand the researcher well. On the one hand, this is something we take for granted. As humans we care and help each other in situations like this. On the other hand, we also know that it is common that people read situations differently and just pass by without bothering.

The latter happened to me the other day when I was in a hurry to pass the street in Sörnäinen, Helsinki. I slipped, fell on the street, and all my groceries were scattered around me. It took some time to get myself together, and my wrist was hurt. Yet, this time people just walked by. Maybe the sight was too common here in these blocks well known for hosting ‘junkies and homeless’ people. Why should one care?

Just by being human the students did something good and extraordinary, they made a difference when helping the woman the other day. Both me and my colleague Patrik Henelius, dean of the faculty of Faculty of Science and Engineering, agreed that we publicly want to express our gratitude to these students.

Sandra Carlsson, Ilkka Söderlund, and Peik Åberg. Thank you! – and thank you also to other students who might have been there but not yet have been recognized. You all made sure that a person in need go the help she needed as fast as possible, and you were a comfort to her while waiting for the ambulance.

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There is an added aspect to all this. What kind of culture and atmosphere do we want to have at campus? How do we want to live and work together as students, teachers, researchers, and personnel in administration and other facilitating roles?

Put this way, the topic also speaks to the question of our organizational values, an issue that lately has been raised both in meetings for heads of subjects at our faculty and by the rector’s leading management team. Could we get better at defining our core values at Åbo Akademi university, and what would these be?

The notion of organizational values is sometimes met with some degrees of healthy suspicion. Do not organizational values primarily represent an instrumental way of branding an organization, of creating looks of something nice and attractive. If that happens, organizational values are deprived of relevance, and they do not reflect the identity of the organization itself.

What should, for instance, be intrinsic core values for a university?

Organizational values can also remain superficial and not implemented to the degree needed. For obvious reasons, inclusion and equality are today common core values in many organizations. As part of our strategy at AAU it is, among other things, claimed that:

Åbo Akademi University will also be an international workplace that recognises and utilises the knowledge and competences of the staff and students. Equality, non-discrimination, inclusion, health, career paths, flexibility and responsibility are self-evident aspects of the dynamic study and work environment at Åbo Akademi University.

Still, people with knowledge in e.g. studies of gender, sexuality and race have often been able to address how much effort it requires to reach far enough with adhering to such values and to be seen as reliable and sincere in this matter. Organizational values can also be only empty talk.

From another perspective, we can also claim that the values we are dependent of for working together are, and need to be, closely tied up with the different roles we have in relation to each other. From being e.g. students, teachers, or service providers, follows different expectations with regards to our code of conduct. What could be a common point for and unite these roles?

Nonetheless, we are one community and I do think we need ways of thinking of how we work together. We need ways of discussing and articulating this, including what our context – the fact that we are a university – means for all this.

I have brought up a couple of critical points with regards to the idea of core organizational values. Already these indicate that any process on organizational values must be sincere, reflective, critical and context bound. It is therefore something that also takes time and engagement, and demands bravery.

Finally, perhaps there is also another way to think of values for living together as a working community. In contrast to an instrumental approach based on our specific roles, or our goals and what we want to achieve, we can depart from more basic questions, such as: What is needed in this situation? What can we do for each other? How can we help?

It was the same kind of basic questions that made a difference in the case of the researcher and the students, and this can also be a model for thinking of organisational values. We can make space for a basic humanity also within the university context, a community where we live and work together as students, teachers, researchers, and personnel in administration and other facilitating duties. Such a notion – being human together – can also make a difference here for our campus community.