Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to integrate research conducted on work values, political values and cultural values to develop a new heuristic model of values that can be applied to workplace outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper that draws upon the work values, political values and cultural values literatures and the “similarity leads to attraction” and “dissimilarity leads to repulsion” hypotheses to advocate an integrative conceptual model spanning these constructs. Findings: Integrating the three types of values with the underlying hypotheses of “similarity leads to attraction” and “dissimilarity leads to repulsion”, an internally consistent two-factor model of values is developed. This heuristic model argues that one set of factors causes value congruence and its associated outcomes and a different set of factors causes value incongruence and its associated outcomes. By conceptualizing value congruence and value incongruence as a