The Impact of Personal Values on Innovativeness of Management

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to empirically examine the impact of a manager's personal values on manager's innovativeness. Personal values are measured with the Schwartz value survey, and the innovativeness with a set of items referring to innovative working and behavior. Results are based on the answers of 259 Slovenian managers. Results reveal several significant associations between single values as well as dimensions of values with managers' innovativeness. Findings from this seminal study provide an important insight into values and their dimensions, which most significantly shape innovative working and behavior of managers in organizations. Findings may be critically used for reformation of the education system, in-service educational purposes in organizations as well as for consulting purposes. Consequently, the appropriate approach can be formulated to use advantage of values, which positively influences innovativeness and diminishes the impact of those, which negatively influences managers' innovativeness. Findings may also be critically used to improve innovativeness outside Slovenia.