Personal Values and Managerial Behaviour

Abstract

The main purpose of this chapter is to comprehensively examine the role of managers’ personal values in terms of influencing behaviour. First, the chapter introduces existing studies about the relations between individuals’ personal values and managers’ behaviour, where values are considered as key drivers of manager behaviour in organizations. The chapter describes the phenomena of personal values and their empirical examination within the frame of management, as well as psychological literature. Various approaches to measuring personal values are presented. Since we base our discussion and measurement of values on Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values, we present this theory comprehensively. Based on the literature review, we try to emphasize the most influential personal values and groups of values that determine managers’ behaviour, regardless of the methodology used for measuring personal values or the approach to examining managers’ behaviour. The last part of the chapter provides an overview of the links between the most significant personal values and managers’ behaviour, and outlines typical single values and dimensions of values for managers’ behaviour in modern organizations.