Work values and motives 723 Personnel Review, Vol. 29 No. 6, 2000, pp. 723-742. # MCB University Press, 0048-3486 Received March 1997 Revised February 1999 Accepted February 1999 A comparison of work values and motives among Zimbabwean and British managers Joan Harvey University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Steve Carter University of Derby, Derby, UK, and Godfrey Mudimu University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe Keywords Work values, Motivation, Loyalty, Status, Africa, United Kingdom Abstract Work values and attitudes were compared for 117 African and 82 British managers and management students. It was predicted that Africans would place more importance on status, prestige and position as motivators, would be less likely to accept criticism, and rate courtesy, social approval and loyalty more favourably than British respondents. Existing scales of social approval and derived need satisfaction were modified and a third one constructed in order to obtain the measurements. The results confirmed the hypothesis relating to status, prestige, position, tentatively supported that relating to social approval, partly confirmed the hypothesis for loyalty and the results for courtesy and acceptance of criticism were not proven. These results are discussed in terms of the methodological issues associated with cross-cultural comparisons and the implications for motivation and management activities. Introduction There is increasing evidence showing that Western management theories, of motivation and work values in particular, need to be adapted to local cultural features of independent African countries (Orpen, 1979; Blunt, 1983; Munro, 1986). Much of this research has been hampered by measurement and definitional problems in addition to the wider issues associated with the substantial economic and social changes in many countries (Blunt, 1983; Munro, 1986; Blunt and Jones, 1997). Four hypotheses are developed here to test some of the observed differences in work values and motives in relation to need satisfaction, social approval, admitting weakness and pride. They imply major changes to our understanding of some of the basic theories of motivation and culture and there are also implications for management methods such as appraisal and organizational development since these methods hinge on factors such as acceptance of criticism and the value of job content factors. Background The literature on cultural differences in the work environment has, until recently, considered them to be residual variables in the analysis of managers' The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com