International Research Project on Value Management

The purpose of this study and its on-line poll will be to demonstrate how important values are for small companies in today's competitive atmosphere and how they can live and breathe them. This study will analyse issues of corporate culture and the specific impact it has on employees in terms of tolerating mistakes or communication culture. The European Institute for Knowledge and Value Management (EIKV) will utilise its international nexus to launch this study by disseminating it over three countries - Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It is also backed up by selected economic associations and colleges.

Increasing numbers of companies are noticing that they are limited in their capability to profitably translate the «wave of euphoria» kicked off in times of hype on issues such as knowledge management and information pooling into reality. The knowledge in employees' heads makes companies dependant upon them. What's more, this constitutes a major risk of a loss of knowledge if there is a rise in employee turnover or if employees turn away from the company's value system. The lack of a basic system of values and vigorous programme of value management spells out the danger of valuable but unexploited knowledge that cannot be applied to the benefit of the company, or its stakeholders.