What Are the Benefits of Focusing on Generation-Based Differences and at What Cost?

David M. Cadiz, Donald M. Truxillo and Franco Fraccaroli

Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2015, vol. 8, issue 3, 356-362

Abstract: We agree with and expand on the points made by Costanza and Finkelstein (2015) regarding the definition of “generation” and its measurement, the lack of theory in this area; the harmful effects of propagating generationally based differences to organizations, society, and individuals; and the future directions to make this line of research more applicable to organizations and the workplace. Examining age differences at work through the lens of well-established within-person changes in physical ability (e.g., Maertens, Putter, Chen, Diehl, & Huang, 2012), cognition (e.g., Schaie, 1994), motivation (e.g., Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), personality (e.g., Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006), and lifespan development theories (e.g., Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999) would likely be more productive than using loose, relatively atheoretical generational stereotypes to understand age differences at work.

Date: 2015
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