Individualistic and Collectivist Values in Business: A Retail Management Perspective in Privatizing Economies

The globalization and intensification of competition in markets have generated considerable interest in those factors affecting business performance. Among those factors, managers’ values and attitudes are important because they affect their perceptions of the world, which in turn determine the formulation of their marketing strategy. An increasing body of research identifies individualistic and collectivist values as domains which have an important impact on business behavior. However, there is insufficient understanding of the specific ways in which individualistic and collectivist values influence marketing managers. The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual discussion of the relative influence of managers’ individualistic versus collectivist values on business practice, in the context of the privatizing economies in Central and Eastern Europe. The dynamics of the social and economic changes of transition have created a context in which traditional collectivist value systems coexist with new entrepreneurial values of a more individualistic nature. This situation makes privatizing countries ideal research laboratories for comparing marketing practices used by managers with different values and attitudes.