Organizations Between Environmental and Economic Concern: How Employees’ Personal Values and Attitudes Predict Preparedness of Organizations for Environmental Protection

Paper examines the relationships between personal values, attitudes and companies' devotion of resources to environmental protection based on the value theory and sustainability theory. We proposed a model for the study of the influence of personal values on attitudes toward concerns for environment and economics results, and influences of both considered attitudes on preparedness of organizations for devotion of resources to environmental protection. The model was tested with structural equation modeling approach, using data collected from 600 employees in organizations and 300 post-graduate business students as future employees in Slovenia. The results indicate that universalism and benevolence, for employees, and benevolence and security, for students, are strong positive predictors of concern for the environment. Security and tradition, for employees, and tradition, for students, are strong negative predictors of concern for the environment. Concern for the environment is strongly positively correlated with the allocation of resources to environmental protection, for both groups. Results about employees' and students' concern for environment are in line with previous studies. But contradictory to the expectation, in both groups concern for economic results showed a weak positive impact on regarding the level of the devotion of resources to environmental protection.