Influence of managers personal values and ethical behaviour on business success of hotel enterprises
Understanding ethical/unethical conduct is difficult, given that the ethical/unethical choice of actions is under the influence of different personal values. Individuals are strongly and permanently stimulated towards a specific action, and their cultural background also contains a framework for permitted and prohibited behavior. The purpose of this paper is to assess the importance of terminal and instrumental values of top level management, and to know what values motivate and direct the management of the most ethical/unethical behavior. This paper presents the results of empirical research of ethical/unethical behavior of top level management and performance indicators in large hotel enterprises in Croatia. Data analysis used descriptive statistical analysis, Fisher's test, rank correlation, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analysis of reliability. The obtained results confirmed the academic hypothesis: "Top level management of large hotel enterprises in the Republic of Croatia who opt for an ethical progress of behaviour achieve better business results in the long term than those who opt for a non ethical progress of behaviour." The role of strategic managers in promoting ethical conduct as well as establishing and implementing ethical values in enterprises has strengthened, while understanding the relationship between ethical behaviour and business success indicators paved the way for creating and enforcing ethical business policies and strategies in the process of strategic management, in order to ensure economic progress.