Student Perception of the Social Value of Responsible Management

Abstract

In responsible management, managerial efficiency and sustainable development meet and influence each other. In order to give meaning to their organisation, to respect and look after their collaborators, a manager must promote a set of values on a personal, organisational and societal level. The purpose of this paper is to study the social value attributed to responsible management by students of a technical university. We have therefore undertaken to study a set of seven values attributed to responsible management and, more precisely, their utility and social desirability on a personal, organisational and societal level. The values have been operationalized with personality descriptors. The 60 participants in this study are students from a Romanian technical university. They had to assess, on four scales of seven points each (two for desirability and two for social utility), the value of a person characterised by one of the seven values attributed to responsible management. The results show us that efficiency is the value perceived by the students as being the most desirable for responsible management, and that in terms of social utility, agility is the most appreciated value. We found that there is indeed an effect of the context in which these values are perceived. Efficiency, audacity, dedication and integrity are perceived as more useful at an organisational level, while solidarity was perceived as more useful on a societal level. At the organisational level we also found a gender effect, in the sense that women appreciate people who are efficient, have integrity or are humble more than men do.