Influence of the entrepreneur’s personal values in business governance style and their relationship with happiness at work

Abstract

Purpose Happiness management is receiving increasing attention in business, and this is reflected in the literature. But any business management option has to be grounded in a true awareness or belief that it will be a suitable and appropriate choice. In this belief the personal values of those who have the power to lead the way to weigh heavily. In this sense, there are personal values that, when used as guidelines in the management of a company, seem to promote the happiness of employees in the work environment. The purpose of this paper is to find the personal values of the entrepreneur. As a secondary objective, the authors also study whether these values are associated with certain entrepreneurs’ socio-demographic factors (gender and age). Design/methodology/approach The group to be studied is the Spanish business community. An exploratory study is carried out, first, with the definition of value constructs according to Schwartz’s personal values model and, second, with a relational analysis, measuring association effects through logistic regression. Findings Two higher-order personal values of the entrepreneur are found that seem to contain all the elements that would lead to management styles that would facilitate happiness at work. These values emerge from a dimension model of Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. MVP which, however, does not follow its four adjacent/antagonistic dimensions, but is composed of three dimensions adjacent to each other and, therefore, complementary. Moreover, some stereotypes in the literature on the relationships between personal values and certain socio-demographic factors are broken down and their effects on happiness at work are revealed. Research limitations/implications One of the limitations of this work is the relatively small sample size. In this sense, it would be useful to check whether the overall results are repeated in larger samples. Another limitation is that this is a portrait of the group at a given time. Given the experimental nature of this type of work, especially in the case of socio-demographic factors, it would be advisable to carry out a follow-up longitudinal analysis with a time horizon. This would allow a more precise investigation of the effects of the variables mentioned above. In addition, a third limitation is that the authors are studying the collective of Spanish entrepreneurs, and in the study of personal values, culture has a determining influence (Schenck, 2016; Boer and Boehnke, 2016; Perozo and Paz, 2016). It would also be worthwhile considering this study by sector: are the values the same for entrepreneurs in different sectors?; or in some specific sectors, for example, are there differences between entrepreneurs with tech businesses versus non-tech businesses or those who make the circular economy or the green economy a guideline for their organizations? Thus, technology companies must be open to change. Openness and innovation are for their entrepreneurs’ key values to ensure their performance (Tseng, 2010; Van Auken et al., 2008). However, in these organizations, there is a framework of conflicting values between the required flexibility and the values of power and control that the entrepreneur needs, and wants, to have (Albarracín et al., 2014). On the other hand, personal values determine green self-identity and moderate its relationships with ecological care and the moral obligation of the entrepreneur (Blankenberg and Alhusen, 2019; Barbarossa et al., 2017). Therefore, it could be analysed whether these values are maintained in entrepreneurs in these sectors, influencing, as discussed in this paper, greater happiness in the work context; and whether they are conditioned by gender or age (Fotieva, 2021; Li et al., 2020). It would also be helpful to study the socio-demographic influence further, to analyse the possibility of interaction or confounding effects between socio-demographic variables and some other variables not addressed in this paper. For example, does purchasing power or income level, affect personal values? And do the values that give content to F2, power and control, lead the entrepreneur to a higher level of income level or vice versa? Do other factors play a role? In fact, for Hirigoyen (2008), values such as altruism, benevolence and universalism are considered as obstacles to the development of the company. Subsequently, authors such as Salas-Vallina (2018) and Boubakary (2015) conclude that far from that idea, these axiological elements would lead to more significant business development through the satisfaction and happiness they generate in employees and stimulate their productivity, matching with the conclusions. It would be interesting, as a complement to the approach of this work, to carry out a study on the happiness at work of the entrepreneur’s employees, being the group of employees surveyed. Knowing the profile of values of an entrepreneur through the scale proposed in this work, it would be possible to analyse whether this is associated with greater or lesser perceived happiness among his/her employees. As mentioned above, from the methodological point of view, a risk of using the multidimensional scaling modelling for the analysis of personal values is that the respondent reflects more what he/she considers socially desirable than his/her true perception. This bias is one of the main limitations of psychological research. However, the fact that European Statistical Office surveys are guided by experts, both in processing -knowing how to deal with social desirability in personal values research (Danioni and Barni, 2020) – and in data collection, eliminates this limitation. Practical implications However, despite the above limitations, this paper makes important contributions. On the one hand, at a theoretical and instrumental level, it shows that the higher-order values graph of Spanish entrepreneurs follows the circumplex essence of the Schwartz value model but does not obey its number of higher-order dimensions. In the case of entrepreneurs, it consists of three elements, three dimensions, adjacent and complementary. None of them contradicts any other. A methodology is created to portray the Spanish entrepreneur in an axiological way and, from this portrait, to reveal his/her tendency towards a leadership style that promotes the happiness of his/her employees, through the importance given to these three factors or dimensions. These dimensions are weighted, in turn, by issues such as gender or age group. For added practical purposes, this information would be beneficial, in the first place, for all those who want to work in and with a particular entrepreneur. The type of leadership or management expected is a factor or reason why a person decides where he/she would like to work (Qing et al., 2020; Lee, 2016). This is not only for the potential employees of that business but also for all those groups or stakeholders, who engage with the company to perform their functions. Individuals make important decisions and choices about their relationships in the work environment based on the alignment of their values with those of the party they want to engage with (Sagiv et al., 2015). On the other hand, it can serve entrepreneurship educators. By knowing the value factors of entrepreneurs, adjusted to the culture of the particular territory, they will be able to pass on this information to their entrepreneurship students (Karimi and Makreet, 2020; Arieli and Tenne-Gazit, 2017) and teach them how they could increase the happiness at work. It also serves to better understand the constructs of management values-employee engagement-workplace happiness in the current environment (Ravina-Ripoll et al., 2020; Salas-Vallina et al., 2017; Wang and Yang, 2016), by introducing the role of personal values on the entrepreneur’s governance style into this construct (Figure 1). Social implications Finally, this study can also have social implications, making its tiny contribution to the SDGs through the study of personal values that guide the behaviour of the entrepreneur. The decision by international institutions for countries to implement the sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UNSDG 2030 Agenda) as cross-cutting strands of their policies has boosted the idea of addressing happiness at work. Thus, SDG 8 talks about Decent Work. In addition to the priority of improving the conditions of groups living in discriminatory working environments (child labour, poverty, precariousness, etc.), taken to its maximum expression, this objective encompasses much more. Workers spend a large part of their lives at work. At the same time, a business needs its employees to be productive. SDG 8 aims to ensure that people have quality employment, increasing their productivity and consumption potential. On the other hand, SDG 3 is about “Health and Well-being”, i.e. ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all ages. It is also about health and well-being in the work environment. Issues such as interpersonal relationships at work, environment and teams, organizational culture, role in the organization, autonomy at work and fostering innovative spirit, can be factors that, if poorly managed, reduce the feeling or perception of happiness at work, especially in today’s digital world (Foncubierta-Rodríguez and Montero-Sánchez, 2019; Leka and Houdmont, 2010; Näswall et al., 2008). Originality/value The role of certain higher-order personal values of the entrepreneur is highlighted, which could make him/her tend towards the realization of happiness management practices. Furthermore, through the methodology used, a model of the entrepreneur’s higher-order values has been established, which can be used as a tool to generate reasonable expectations about his/her way of governance and to what extent it is close to a framework conducive to happiness management. This information can be beneficial to all those people and groups that establish relationships with the company, from managers and employees to external stakeholders. In this way, it also helps to anticipate the companýs response to corporate social responsibility.

The Impact of Risk Perception Difference of Members of a Scientific Research Project Team on Information Adoption: The Moderating Effect of Knowledge Inertia

“…Further, Hypotheses 3, 4, 5 all passed the tests. Among them, the improvement in the learning willingness of the scientific research project team members is conducive to promoting the members' information adoption behavior, indicating that the learning and acquisition of new knowledge and information can stimulate the individual information adoption behavior [48,49], and realize the learning and information interaction of individuals and teams as a whole [62]. At the same time, learning willingness plays a mediating role between risk perception difference and information adoption behavior, which is consistent with the relevant results of social cognitive theory.…”

“…In scientific research projects, team members need to parse information from the "noisy" project environment, and judge, select, and process effective information. As the recipients of different cognitive concepts and ideas, the improvement in team members' willingness to learn will help them understand different perceptions, thereby realizing the transformation and optimization of their own knowledge and cognitive structure [47], which is conducive to innovation [48,49] and is more likely to demonstrate adoptive behavior. On the contrary, if the individual's willingness to learn is insufficient, it is easy to cause negative emotions in the process of information reception and digestion, resulting in the failure of knowledge or information transfer [23].…”

How to Measure the Happy-Productive Worker Thesis

“…The HPW thesis, in a very general way, postulates the existence of a positive relationship between happiness and performance; that is, the thesis is supported by the belief that happy workers tend to be more productive or perform better than unhappy workers [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Thus, from the thesis analysis, it can be assumed that if organisations/managers focus on increasing happiness, they will be able to differentiate themselves from the competition, having a greater probability of gaining a competitive advantage over their competitors.…”

“…The HPW thesis is founded on the belief that happy employees are more productive; that is, the higher the level of happiness of an individual, the better their performance will be as opposed to what is expected of unhappy employees [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. However, there are still doubts about the integrity of the relationship postulated by the thesis, and investigations fail to ascertain a positive relationship between happiness and performance levels [5,25].…”

The Spanish home care workers between job vulnerability and happiness in times of crisis

“…Experiencing positive emotions motivates effort and preparation for future challenges (Fredrickson, 2001), so fostering working conditions that promote frequent positive emotions could be a strategy that facilitates organizational change (Grant and McGhee, 2017). Those who are happier are more satisfied with their jobs, perform better and are better evaluated (Foncubierta-Rodrı ´guez, 2021;Walsh et al, 2018). From an organizational point of view, employees who experience happiness frequently, inside and outside of work, generate favorable results such as higher motivation, involvement and organizational commitment resulting in greater long-term loyalty (Thompson and Bruk-Lee, 2020).…”