Generational Shifts in Managerial Values and the Coming of a Unified Business Culture: A Cross-National Analysis Using European Social Survey Data

Abstract

In a globalizing world, cross-national differences in values and business culture and understanding these differences become increasingly central to a range of organizational issues and ethical questions. However, various concerns have been raised about extant empirical research on cross-national dissimilarities in the cultural values of managers (what we refer to as managerial values) and the development of a unified business culture. This paper seeks to address three such concerns with the literature on convergence versus divergence of cultural values. It develops an empirical approach to the study of changing business cultures that revolves around birth cohorts and intergenerational values shifts and aims to advance empirical knowledge of the dynamics of cross-national differences in the cultural values of managers. We use time-series data covering 68,708 managers and are able to consider a sample of 32 countries that represent more than half of the cultural clusters recognized in the literature. Results reveal diverse shifts in managerial values across birth cohorts with cross-national dissimilarities waning for some basic cultural dimensions (''convergence''), remaining stable for other dimensions (''cultural stability''), and becoming more pronounced for other dimensions still (''divarication''). Moving beyond the standard convergence/divergence taxonomy, we conclude that a fullfledged convergence-stability-divarication perspective provides the best basis for thinking about the subtle ways in which business cultures are changing.

Values dependence on generation identification

“…Shifts in managerial values in birth cohorts were found in the analysis of selection of 708 leaders of 32 countries [10]. And similar research shows that international and cross-cultural distinctions can smooth or enhance differences between generations [10,18]. Data of the Chinese researchers show that in their country the younger generation already passed from traditional to modern values [22].…”

“…It is confirmed by results of much research. Transformation of mentality of generations affects personal values [3,6,7], family and gender values [8,9], managerial value [10,11], labor/work values [12,13,14,15,16], civic values [17], political and economic values [18], patriotic values [19]. Generalizing results of research, authors come to a conclusion that a new generation, and especially millennial are more focused on modern and individualistic values, appreciate external purposes more (money, glory) than internal ones (self-development, creativity) [5,2,6,13,20].…”

“…Baker reviewed values worldwide in 1990 and established that as a result of industrialization, people around the world refuse traditional values in favor of secular (rational) values [21]. Shifts in managerial values in birth cohorts were found in the analysis of selection of 708 leaders of 32 countries [10]. And similar research shows that international and cross-cultural distinctions can smooth or enhance differences between generations [10,18].…”

“…At the same time, the research given above have a number of limitations. First, most of them is executed on foreign samples: Australia [7,32], USA [15], Turkey [3,26], Africa [13], Central and Eastern Europe [10,18], China [9,16,23]. Only a small amount of works are devoted to the analysis of values of generations in the former Soviet Union [6] and in certain regions of Russia (Yakutia [8], the Volga region [19], the Central region [12], the Southern region [30], the Northwest region [33]).…”

The new Millennial global leaders: what a difference a generation makes!

“…The vast literature on the persistence of cultural values (e.g., Adler, 1983;Hofstede, 1980;Ralston, Holt, Terpstra, & Kai-Cheng, 1997;Ronen & Shenkar, 1985;Schwartz, 1992;Webber, 1969) underlines the robustness of value differences moving into the future even if there are also growing similarities (e.g., Bond & King, 1985;Tung, 2008;Woldu, Budhwa, & Parkes, 2006), creating a crossvergence of values which is continuing to unfold in complex ways (Ralston, 2008;Ralston, Gustafson, Cheung, & Terpstra, 1993). We have evidence of the persistence of certain values over time, and change in others (Inglehart & Baker, 2000;van Hoorn, 2019). Notably, Inglehart and Baker 2000is a pre-Millennial study, but they find that there are fewer value differences across generations in the low-income and developing societies.…”