ESPOUSED ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES OF THE LARGEST COMPANIES WORLDWIDE AND IN CROATIA

The role of organizational values in business has been increasingly recognized in recent years. They connect all business segments and influence the formulation of organizational goals and business strategy, and modern management is therefore paying increasing attention to the management of organizational values. The aim of this paper is to present and compare espoused or publicly declared organizational values of the largest companies worldwide and in Croatia. For this purpose we made an analysis of corporate web sites and those parts of publicly available documents which indicate organizational values on the samples of the 100 largest Croatian, as well as 100 world’s largest companies. This paper presents the most specific values of the two samples, but also the results of the comparison of their organizational values according to the Mission-based model of organizational values. The results indicate that there are some similarities, but also significant differences in values orientations espoused by the largest Croatian and worldwide largest companies. In addition to theoretical contribution, this paper has practical implications as it indicates trends in managing organizational values in business practices of the world’s largest companies. Finally, it represents the first systematic comparison of the practice of managing organizational values of Croatian companies with the largest companies in the world.