Core Values of the TEACCH Program

Abstract

Several years ago at our University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill University Day observance, the keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Allen, described a Stanford University Business School study designed to identify shared elements of excellent and visionary companies. The authors of this study had assumed that the important variables would be factors such as exceptional leadership, strategic planning, mission statements, profit margins, or some combination of these. Instead, they found that what distinguished excellent companies was a shared core ideology: a set of values and sense of purpose beyond just making money. Moreover, those values were clearly articulated and well-understood among the workers of the companies. The core values were not the same from company to company, although they did have some important factors in common, but they all resulted in progressive growth and excellence.