Do different generations look differently at high performance organizations?

Abstract

Purpose Many researchers argue that the shared values of a generation affect people’s attitude, commitment, and ethics toward work. It is also argued that generational differences may cause tension between employees and with that prevent projects – such as a transition to a high performance organization (HPO) – from being completed successfully. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether generational differences in work values influence people’s perceptions of HPO, and if so, in what ways and how management could deal with it. The HPO Framework developed by de Waal (2012b) was used as a starting point for the study. Design/methodology/approach This study was performed at a Dutch multinational with a management trainee program. In this program, young talents, all belonging to Generation Y, followed a series of internships in various business units. A questionnaire on HPO was distributed among the trainees and their direct managers (all Generation Xers). The average scores for the five factors described in the HPO Framework were calculated for both groups. In addition, attention points were identified for the multinational, i.e. issues that needed to be addressed by the organization in order for it to become an HPO. The scores and the attention points were discussed in a workshop with both trainees and managers. Finally, the results of the workshop were analyzed and several weeks later presented by the authors to a larger audience, to validate the research findings. Findings The research results showed that there was a close match between the opinions of trainees (Generation Yers) and of managers (Generation Xers) concerning the general importance of the HPO factors, the organization’s performance on these factors, and the actions needed to improve on them. There were several explanations for the fact that generational differences did not influence the opinions of both generations on HPO. For example, the corporate culture in a multinational may be predominant over national culture, creating uniform thinking; or new employees adapt quickly to the organization and behave according to established patterns and thereby comply to the accepted way of thinking in the company. Research limitations/implications The practical implication of this study is that an organization does not have to target specific groups to convince people of the importance of HPO. It should be sufficient to hold an informative session for all staff on HPO before starting the joint HPO transition process. Originality/value This is the first study into how generational differences in work values could influence the opinions of various generations on HPO.

Assessing high performance: A South African case study

“…This result has been found in previous studies using the HPO framework (De Waal, Peters & Broekhuizen 2017). The difference in perception seems to be caused by the fact that people who have been at the company a shorter period of time, in general, have less access to comparative information than managers.…”

Generational Differences in the Perception of Corporate Culture in European Transport Enterprises

“…Following actual research studies conducted in the area of corporate culture in manufacturing as well as in service sector businesses [66][67][68][69], generational differences in the opinions on corporate culture can be stated. In total, 1159 employees working in the European transport companies were engaged in the research aimed at the verification of differences in the perception of preferred level of corporate culture in terms of generations owing to the fact that diversity in terms of generations was proven by several research studies [42,[70][71][72][73][74][75][76] defining differences in opinions, values, attitudes or goals associated with individual generations.…”

Generation and gender factors of the structure of value orientations

“…This leads to a complication of social relations. In particular, differences in value orientations explain the intergenerational conflict [13,14], workplace tensions [15], as well as other problems of intergenerational communication [16,17]. At the same time, at the moment, the cultural values of generations are not sufficiently studied.…”