The stimulus of European Union accession on the personal values formation process : a study of Croatia and Slovenia

Dabić, Marina (author), Egri, Carolyn P. (author), Potočan, Vojko (author), Nedelko, Zlatko (author)

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the change inthe personal values orientations of individuals in Croatia and Slovenia resulting from the countries' accession to the European Union (EU). We examined business managers' and professionals' value orientation by using four individual-level higher-order dimensions of self-transcendence, self-enhancement, openness to change and conservation, as defined in Schwartz's value theory.To capture the effect of EU accession, we examined employees' values orientation before accession to the EU (Croatia N=276;Slovenia N=389) and after each country's accession (Croatia N=223, Slovenia N=336). This study reveals a substantial impactof this major socio-political change on the individual value-formation process. The value-formation of Croatia and Slovenia poorly follows manifested EU common principles and shared values,where Slovenians have more aversive look at the EU integration, then Croatians, what can be assigned to 'initial enthusiasm', as Croatia entered almost decade later. The identified 'EU integration gap' warns that accession to the EU is more associated with reaping economic benefits than with aligning the country's values with those emphasized by EU integration. The findings have important implications for value management in the EU, single countries, and organizations.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Slovenia, Croatia, EU, integration, values, European Union, personal values, Schwartz value theory, value formation process, business managers, professionals
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 1-27
• Numbering: Vol. 36, iss. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148076
• UDC: 061.1EU
• ISSN on article: 1331-677X
• DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2023.2167222
• COBISS.SI-ID: 145025539
• Publication date in RUL: 26.07.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Ekonomska istraživanja = Economic research
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli
• ISSN: 1331-677X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 6796877

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Slovenija, Hrvaška, EU, integracija, vrednote