Abstract:

Nowadays values occupy a high position on the list of priorities in contemporary management, especially in a multicultural environment. There are two reasons for that. First, values are a vital element that supports managers in their daily work, i.e. their realisation of the company’s vision, mission and goals, which translates into team management. Second, values are crucial in an environment of cultural diversity because they ‘bind’ members of multicultural teams, which has a positive impact on e.g. their creativity and willingness to share their knowledge and experience. The study described in this article is a mixed-method study which consists of the analysis of the literature and an empirical study. It is a preliminary study (which will be followed by an in-depth study) devoted to values. The main purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the results obtained at this stage. The results of the Corporate Values Index (CVI) study conducted by the international ECCO Network, which is made up by independent public relations agencies, are the starting point for the study conducted by the authors of the article. The CVI surveys were conducted in 2006, 2009 and 2013 in over a dozen countries (the questions concerned values considered by companies the core ones and the extent to which businesses uses values as a concept in management). This article is a continuation of the study on values conducted by the authors among the Polish managers between July and August 2020 (eight telephone interviews) and presents and analyses the data obtained during the interviews held via the MS Teams application between September 2020 and January 2021 with the Spanish managers (eight interviews) and the Czech managers (eight interviews) who work with multicultural teams. The results of the study (i.e. the interviews with managers of three nationalities) and the analysis of the literature reveal that managers’ values have a strong impact on their management in a culturally diverse work environment.