History and Validity

Dr Robert S. Hartman is commonly acknowledged as being the founding father of modern value science. However it is a student of Hartman, Professor Wayne Carpenter, who has been responsible for the developing the science of Axiology to provide accurate and predictive people assessment for use in the 21 st century.

Carpenter understood that Hartman had, indeed, formulated a universal theory and he devoted himself totally to extending Hartman’s work. He was able to rely on many of Hartman’s unfinished papers and has spent his entire career, spanning over 30 years, developing a coherent, computerised measurement system of this work.

Carpenter has validated the profile in partnership with the company Dollar General, by putting 40,000 of their staff through the profile and retesting every 5 years. It was during this period that he refined the original Hartman Value Profile into today’s Axia Profile and developed outputs specifically designed to benefit business in areas critical to success. Reports were designed which enable companies to recruit staff with more than just a CV and interview to make an assessment – they now had an insight into the takers internal valuing system , and it is that which influences our attitudes, decisions and actions, basically “why” we do what we do.

Carpenter was able to develop further outputs designed to measure key competencies in areas such as sales, customer services and general employability. Over time these have been bespoked to specific areas such as nursing (Hospital Corporation of America), security and sport (the PGA Tour and New York Yankees). His work has led to the Axia Profile having available over 50 specialist outputs based on the single analysis of an individual’s valuing process.

Although new to the UK, this profile has been valued, validated and successfully applied in the US for over 20 years, in partnership with leading organisations including: AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Federal Aviation Administration, Ford Motor Company, Goldman Sachs, Hospital Corporation of America, IBM, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, NASA, New York Yankees, Texaco and Xerox. Axiology has also been used and validated in universities throughout the US including Yale, Harvard and Princeton.

A timeline of these validations appears overleaf – these represent the key validations and reviews conducted by and for the psychometric and legal specialists within client companies. The results, while theoretically rigorous, are also targeted toward actual organisational usage. Since they involve internal data, privacy concerns require that the studies remain proprietary. There have been numerous tests done on original Hartman material as well, these are available on request by emailing colin_phelan@pmlgroup.com.