My understanding is that valuechangelistener is called before UpdateModel.
ValueChangeListeners are called during Phase 3 (Process Validations) Phase 5 (Invoke Application) there the ActionListeners are called before the "action method" of your backing bean An interesting blog entry about "playing" with JSF's lifecycle is [1]. -Matthias [1] http://www.jroller.com/page/cschalk?entry=getting_familiar_with_the_jsf
