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help the different generations work together better ... and have fun doing it! :)
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore possible changes in national culture for generations X and Y members from selected Asian national cultures and the impact on cross-cultural negotiations.
Design/methodology/approach – An interpretivist epistemology is combined with an ontology of subjectivism for this exploratory study which does not seek generalization. Emphasis is placed on the development of new survey items by members of generations X and Y for Hofstede's dimensions. An online survey yielded
Findings – For national culture dimensions, only individualism/collectivism tests for significant differences between Asian GenY and Baby Boomers. GenX and GenY show little interest in pre-opening relationship building and focus on positioning and compromising.
Research limitations/implications – The study is exploratory in nature and future studies should revisit this topic. The items developed to measure national culture might be biased by the 39 focus group participants. Future studies should consider differentiating Asian groups.
Practical implications – Western negotiators need to prepare for multiple scenarios when entering negotiations with Asian partners. Depending on the age of the Asian negotiator, emphasis on different phases of the negotiation process needs to be reevaluated.
Originality/value – This research holds immediate lessons for cross-cultural negotiations. Results support that generations X and Y members in some Asian cultures do not differ from their elders across all Hofstede dimensions, however they display different negotiation behaviors.
Purpose – This study aims to compare the career patterns of Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and Millennials over the various stages of their careers to determine whether there have been notable shifts away from the “traditional” career model characterized by long-term linear, upward career movement, toward a “modern” career model characterized by increased job mobility, organizational mobility and multi-directional career movement.
Design/methodology/approach – The retrospective career accounts of 105 Canadians were gathered through review of résumé information and semi-structured interviews. The job changes and organizational changes experienced by each respondent in each five-year career period (e.g. age 20-24, 25-29) and the direction of job changes (i.e. upward, downward, lateral or change of career track) were recorded. The generations were compared statistically on each of these measures through analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Findings – Significant inter-generational differences were observed on all variables of interest, but the differences were largely restricted to the age 20-24 and 30-34 career stages.
Research limitations/implications – The study relied on a small sample because of the qualitative nature of the data collection. The sample was also exclusively Canadian. The results should therefore be interpreted with care and the research should be replicated with different types of respondents and in different cultural contexts.
Practical implications – The research demonstrates to employers that the younger generations change jobs and employers at a greater rate than previous generations and that they are more willing to accept non-upward career moves. Recruiting and retaining young employees will therefore require a different approach than was used for previous generations.
Originality/value – The use of retrospective accounts allowed for the comparison of generations within various career stages. This overcomes a significant limitation of cross-sectional studies of generational phenomena by simultaneously considering life-cycle and generational cohort effects.
Purpose – Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in the UK have been used as examples of what can be done through free enterprise. Academic interest is developing in the changes taking place as newer generations emerge. Seeks to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – A small-scale qualitative study was undertaken with interviews of five men and five women entrepreneurs of the second generation. The issues explored included their background, the factors that have influenced, facilitated or inhibited their decision to become self-employed, their experiences of entrepreneurship and the particular issues that confronted them. Female entrepreneurs in the sample were older and felt inhibited and more constrained than their male counterparts in their freedom to act.
Findings – Both males and females of second generation entered business through attraction for the opportunities rather than as their only option in an unknown environment. Notwithstanding expectations, later generations did not enter activities adding much greater value than those of the first generation, even though they were better integrated with their environment. Boundary stresses between first and second generation are likely to lead to further studies of succession planning and of the influence of culture and gender on attitudes to enterprise.
Originality/value – Methodologically the study is novel in so far as the researcher (an Asian female from a typical family business background) has taken care to observe the cultural proprieties often noted within this particular group. Hence, the data are arguably more authentic than previous studies undertaken by distant researchers.
Purpose – The study examines the consumer perceived performance risk in successive product generations.
Design/methodology/approach – The results are based on ten focus group interviews. We divide risk into two different levels based on its criticality (attribute and functionality) to be able to assess more than its mere presence in an innovation.
Findings – The study shows performance risk to differ between generations representing different innovation levels, and that this risk is moderated by whether the consumer has usage experience of the original innovation. The results show that the risk consumers perceive is more critical in a modified successor than in an original innovation provided that consumers have usage experience of the latter one.
Practical implications – This study has implications for companies aiming at reducing consumer perceived risk in innovative product launches.
Originality/value – Perceived risk is an important construct in innovation adoption research. Although it has been used to measure and predict individual adoption patterns towards a single innovation, little research has examined its impact on successive product generations. The results offer both theoretical and practical implications.