Title: Strategic intentions guided by individual values: evidence from business owners

Authors: Pavel Prokushenkov; Mike Franz Wahl

Addresses: Department of Management, Estonian Business School, Lauteri 3, 10114 Tallinn, Estonia ' School of Business and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia tee 3, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia

Abstract: This paper aims to research the relationship between business owners' strategic intentions underlined by attitudes and their basic human values in the form of motivational types. The study focused on business owners' attitudes towards gaining power opposed to revenue generation, profit withdrawal time horizon, investment in research and development, adherence to ethical standards, and filling a role in society. Unfolding the association between strategically significant attitudes of business owners and their personal values is crucial. This is a cross-sectional survey study using Spearman's rank correlation analysis. Purposive sampling was conducted to collect data based on the authors' personal network over a period of five years through a questionnaire among 682 business owners from 39 countries. The results showed that business owners' strategically significant attitudes related to their intentions could be not only value-expressive and value-ambivalent as found in previous studies, but also value-unmanifested and value-quasi-manifested. The theoretical and practical implication of the paper is that studying the relationship between strategic intentions and individual values applying a normative approach weakens the validity of the findings.

Keywords: business owners; strategic intentions; attitudes; basic human values; image theory; portrait value questionnaire; PVQ; strategy formation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2023.127938

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2023 Vol.16 No.1, pp.67 - 86

Received: 04 Jun 2021
Accepted: 18 Sep 2021
Published online: 22 Dec 2022 *