Young leaders as implementers of neuroscience innovations in family food businesses

Abstract

Neuroscience and its implementation in work with human resources is an important part of managerial work. It helps to understand people and the processes of motivation, learning, and adaptation to new situations and reactions to changes in human resource management. Implementing new trends in work with human resources is also very important for ensuring the sustainability of family businesses as an irreplaceable part of national economies. Their implementation is helped by the fact that many of the family food businesses are going through the process of generational change, and family business leadership is being taken over by a generation of young managers - leaders. The contribution aimed to discover how the younger generation of managers perceives neuroscience and where they see the opportunity for its application in human resources management. Our research focused on the younger generation of managers -leaders in Slovakia's small and medium-sized food family businesses. A structured controlled interview was used for qualitative data collection, which was statistically evaluated using the Text mining method. As we discovered, some new neuroscience-based practices are already gradually being applied. By focusing our research also on a different view of the implementation of neuroscience into managerial work by gender, the conclusion is that female, young managers focused on using neuroscience to improve the working environment and in the area of human leadership. Young men as managers, were more focused on the growth of employees who already work in the company to be even more efficient and better manage the learning process. It is a very positive finding that young managers of small and medium-sized food enterprises in Slovakia have already begun actively introducing innovative methods of working with human resources using neuroscience knowledge.