Stakeholders or Shareholders? Board members’ personal values and corporate identity

• Autor(a) principal: Barbero, Edson Ricardo
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Marchiano, Marcello
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://rbgn.fecap.br/RBGN/article/view/3020
• topic: Axiological priorities; stakeholders; board of directors; individual values.; Prioridades axiológicas; stakeholders; conselho de administração; valores individuais.; Prioridades axiológicas; stakeholders; conselho de administração; valores individuais.

Purpose – This article diagnoses the relationship between the valuepriorities of board members in Brazil and their companies’ identitiestrending towards stakeholders or shareholders. The paper testedfive hypotheses referring to the fact that board members of profitorientedcompanies are more individualistic, while board members ofstakeholder-oriented companies tend to be more collectivist.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was carried out throughthe Schwartz (1992) values inventory with 74 board members in Brazil.The Brazilian Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) was considered aproxy for stakeholder orientation. The Mann-Whitney test was usedin order to verify if the two independent samples were drawn frompopulations with equal averages.Findings – In partial consonance with previous research, the boardmembers of stakeholder-oriented companies – those participating inthe Corporate Sustainability Index – held less individualistic values.However, for individualistic motivational types, only Stimulation andHedonism were more frequent in companies not participating in theISE index.Originality/value – This result amplifies the predictive power ofindividual values and complements the work of Adams, Licht and Sagiv(2011), which experimentally studied the same relationship withinindividual choices and in a controlled situation. This article enhancesthe theory by incorporating the organizational level into the debate.The results suggest that other factors also influence pro-shareholder orpro-stakeholder corporate orientation.