Generational Diversity at Work

New Research Perspectives

Emma Parry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780415817530
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351224161
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Over the past decade much attention has been paid to the apparent differences in consumption preferences or workplace attitudes and behaviours across generations. Within Western economies such as the USA, UK and Australia, it is commonly assumed that that there are now four generations in the workplace, namely Veterans (born 1925-1942), Baby Boomers (1943-1960), Generation X (1961-1981) and Generation Y (1982- 2000)

The concept of generational differences at work is one that has recently been adopted by practitioners as a basis on which to design human resource management and career management practices. However, there has been some concern in academic circles about the validity of the notion of generations and the evidence base that supports it. There is therefore a need for new perspectives and methodological approaches to investigating generational differences at work in order to establish the validity and value of generations as an axis of diversity. Generational Diversity at Work: New Research Perspectives will address this need by presenting and discussing research into generational diversity that adopts a range of new theoretical perspectives or methodological approaches.

This book is designed as a first step in addressing the need to critically examine the theoretical and empirical basis for generational differences and to provide some new empirical data in this area.

1
New Perspectives on Generational Diversity at Work

Introduction

Emma Parry

The interest in generational diversity at work has exploded since the turn of the twenty-first century. Human resource management (HRM) practitioners, consultants and media commentators are keen to promote the idea that today’s workforce contains factions that differ in their values, attitudes and preferences as a result of when they were born. Indeed, it would be fair to say that HRM practitioners have eagerly adopted the notion of generations as an explanation of differences in employee attitudes and behaviour and as a means to segment the workforce when designing rewards and recognition systems. Academic interest in generational differences has predictably followed with an increasing number of scholars now writing and undertaking research about generations. Most research in this area has aimed to identify the different characteristics of each generation but, despite scepticism about the validity of generational differences at work (Parry and Urwin 2011), few academics have examined the actual conceptualization and operationalization of generations or reconsidered the perspectives popularly adopted in practice. This is perhaps surprising, as it would seem important to evaluate and develop the generational approach if HRM decisions are to be based on assumptions regarding the characteristics of generations. This book addresses this need by bringing together work from a range of scholars whose research has aimed to take an alternative approach or perspective in this growing area. The goal of this text is not to discredit past work on generational differences but rather to highlight the need for further investigation and new perspectives on this concept so that the impact of generational differences in the workplace can be more fully understood.

Generational diversity at work

The definition most commonly used for a ‘generation’ is that by Kupperschmidt (2000: 66): ‘[A]n identifiable group that shares birth years, age, location and significant life events at critical developmental stages.’ In a nutshell, the idea is that individuals who were born at a similar point in time have shared similar experiences during their formative years and therefore have similar attitudes and preferences. In the Western world at least, there are generally seen to be four generations potentially in the workplace: Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. A summary of these is shown in Table 1.1 (taken from Parry and Urwin 2011; Strauss and Howe 1991).

Considerable work has been undertaken to look at the characteristics associated with each of these four generations. For example, Veterans have been described as being loyal to employers, believing in hard work and the status quo, and having respect for authority figures (Berl 2006), as well as having core values that include dedication and sacrifice, conformity, law and order, respect for authority, patience, duty before pleasure, adherence to rules and honour (Zemke et al. 2000). Baby Boomers on the other hand tend to have the core values of optimism, team orientation, personal gratification, health and wellness, personal growth, an obsession with youth, work and involvement, and place emphasis on a sense of accomplishment, achievement and social recognition (Berl 2006; Carlson 2004). Generation X has been perceived as getting bored quickly, having a short attention span, expecting immediate gratification and distrusting institutions (Caudron 1997; Filipczak 1994), although other researchers have described them as self-reliant, adaptable to change and preferring to learn by assimilating information from multiple sources (Tulgan 1996). They are independent and resourceful, comfortable with diversity, value integrity and expect a balanced lifestyle (Bova and Kroth 2001). Finally, Generation Y is seen as being team oriented, cooperative and interdependent, and possessing tighter peer bonds (McCafferty 2003), as well as being particularly technologically savvy with high personal experience of Web 2.0 technology. Their core values have been reported as including optimism, confidence, achievement, sociability, morality and diversity (Zemke et al. 2000). It is not the purpose of this book to re-visit these characteristics or even to examine their accuracy, so I will not discuss them in detail here other than to say that these stereotypes form the basis of the assumptions on which many HRM practitioners are operating when they use generational differences as a means of segmenting the workforce (Parry and Urwin 2009).

Table 1.1 Definitions of generational groups currently in the workforce

Generation	Years of birth	Aho known as
Veterans	1925–1942	Silent Generation, Matures, Traditionalists
Baby Boomers	1943–1960
Generation X	1961–1981	Thirteenth, Baby Busters, Lost Generation
Generation Y	1982–	Millenials, Nexters, Echo Boomers

The state of the art

The idea of generational differences is not new. Indeed, the concept of ‘generations’ is grounded in the sociology literature and is most commonly ascribed to the work of Mannheim (1952), who suggested that a generation was similar to the class position of someone in society in that it is a ‘social location’. Mannheim highlighted five characteristics of society that make generations possible: first, new participants in the social process are emerging; second, former participants are disappearing; third, individuals can only participate in a temporally limited section of the historical process; fourth, that cultural heritage needs to be transmitted; and fifth, that there is a continuous transmission from generation to generation. Members of the same generation have a common location in the historical dimension of the social process, due to sharing a year of birth. This limits their potential experience, meaning that they are predisposed to a characteristic mode of thought and experience. In understanding the rationale behind this book, it is important to note that Mannheim also dictated that sharing a year of birth alone is not sufficient for people to be members of the same generation. Rather they must share common experiences in order to create a concrete bond between members of a generation so that they share ‘an identity of responses, a certain affinity in the way in which they all move with, and are formed by, their common experiences’ (Mannheim 1952: 306).

We can see from Mannheim’s theoretical description of a generation, where the idea that is commonly accepted today, that people who were born at a similar point in time share attitudes and values, has come from. However, we can also see that the description of the generations of Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Y, based on birth year alone, is not sufficient in order to satisfy Mannheim’s criteria. In particular, the use of these same generational categories across different countries makes little sense – how can we expect an individual born in 1975 in Shanghai to have had the same experience growing up as one born in New York, for instance?

In a paper that I co-authored with Peter Urwin (Parry and Urwin 2011), we discussed these conceptual difficulties at length and concluded that actually, the approach to identifying generations commonly adopted in practice, and also by many scholars in their research, does not allow for a true definition of a generation, but only provides a description of different age cohorts (which of course might be useful in itself). A true definition of a generation should consider characteristics of ‘social space’ other than birth year, such as geographical location or gender. Indeed, previous studies have found heterogeneity within generational groups based on factors such as gender or race (Eskilson and Wiley 1999; Parker and Chusmir 1990) and research in non-Western societies has suggested that the four generations described above are not valid outside of the Western world (see for example Hui-Chun and Miller 2003, 2005; Parry et al. 2012). The current text also provides further evidence of this latter suggestion in Chapter 13. The failure to properly operationalize generations as conceptualized by Mannheim (1952) is the first of two significant concerns with regard to the way that generations have been conceptualized and operationalized both practically and in research.

The second issue is more practical in nature and related to the research studies on which most evidence regarding generational differences are based. The majority of research in this area relies on cross-sectional studies that are problematic in their failure to distinguish between cohort (generational), age (maturation) and period (the time in which the research was conducted) effects (Parry and Urwin 2011; Rhodes 1983). Rhodes explained that if differences in work-related attitudes were age effects then we would expect younger adults to become more like older adults as they age. If, however, differences were due to cohort effects, we would expect these attitudes and the differences between age cohorts to remain relatively stable. Cross-sectional designs can identify differences between age groups but cannot establish whether these are due to age or cohort effects. What this means is that, despite the significant amount of work done to identify the characteristics of generational groups, not only are these findings mixed (Parry and Urwin 2011) but we cannot be sure that any differences can actually be ascribed to generational effects. Rhodes suggested the necessity to use longitudinal time-lag designs in generational research – a call that is picked up by two of the chapters in this book.

This book is not alone in highlighting the problems inherent in the study of generational diversity. Several authors have expressed the above concerns (see, for example, Giancola 2006; Parry and Urwin 2011). An understanding of these concerns is important here, however, as these form the basis and rationale for this book. Our purpose here, though, is to do more than express concern and to move the field forward with new conceptual perspectives and methodological approaches.

This book

This book has arisen as a result of ongoing conversations between a group of academics as to the validity of generational diversity as a means of segmenting the workforce. It is useful here to say a few words about how this book was conceived as this will also make clear its purpose. It is fair to say that many of us who research age diversity were initially a little dismissive of generations as a legitimate alternative to segmenting the workforce. I remember a discussion about generational diversity at a colloquium about the ageing workforce a few years ago. Several members of the group felt that this approach had no value and one even suggested that it had been created as a means to continue discriminating against individuals based on age, despite the recently introduced legislation against age discrimination in the UK. This cynicism, coupled with the operational and methodological concerns described above, has led myself and others to take a closer look at the concept of generational differences at work and to consider the best way forward in researching this area.

Specifically, ad hoc discussions at the Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Conference in 2010 led to more formal discussions about ‘the value of generations’ at a professional development workshop at the same conference in 2011. The overwhelming result of this workshop was the agreement that current approaches to studying generations were problematic and that something ‘needed to be done’. A year later, some of the chapter authors from this text presented some initial research ideas in a symposium at AOM 2012 and made the decision to use these as a basis for what is now this text. We see this as very much the first step on a potentially long, but necessary, journey, to translate the notion of generations from something that merely has face validity and is useful to practitioners into a well-developed construct based on sound evidence. The chapters presented here are therefore designed specifically to move the field forward, either conceptually or empirically, and are seen as a basis for future research that we, and we hope others, will undertake.

The book is split into four main parts. Part I examines the conceptualization of generations and generational diversity at work, and contains three chapters. In Chapter 2, Segers, Inceoglu and Finkelstein consider the concept of generations alongside other perspectives on age. This chapter is useful in reminding us that generations represent only one way of conceptualizing age. Segers et al. suggest that generations is only one of seven substantive forms of age, along with chronological, physical–cognitive, organizational, occupational, life-events and socio-emotional age. In addition, they go on to propose that researchers should not only consider the form of age but also the point of comparison (e.g. relative or normative observations) when talking about age and the context in which an individual is operating (e.g. country, industry). Segers et al. therefor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of illustrations
• About the editor
• About the contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 New perspectives on generational diversity at work: introduction
• PART I Conceptualizing age and generations
• PART II Methodological approaches to investigating generational diversity
• PART III New empirical evidence about generations
• PART IV Generations outside of the Western context
• Index