Abstract
This paper revisits organisational values tensions through qualitative research with coaching clients and coaches. Rather than treating tensions as problems of misalignment, participants’ accounts reveal experiences of relational rupture marked by emotional strain, masking and diminished identity coherence. Drawing on photo-elicitation interviews, the study foregrounds the affective and moral dimensions of perceived inconsistencies between espoused and enacted organisational values. These experiences are interpreted through a values-oriented psychological contract lens, suggesting that tensions may be understood as breaches in implicit relational expectations. In response, coaching emerged as a distinctive form of values work: a meso-level relational practice in which individuals articulated, examined and renegotiated values to restore coherence and agency. While coaching supported processes of internal repair, organisational-level reconstitution of the relationship was less evident. The paper invites discussion about how responsibility for navigating values tensions is distributed and what this implies for organisational thriving.