Entitled or misunderstood? Towards the repositioning of the sense of entitlement concept in the generational difference debate^†

† Submission for special issue of Community, Work & Family to celebrate the work and influence of Sue Lewis.

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates in the broad area of generational differences at work. Specifically, we locate this study within the literature of the work values and expectations of the ‘Millennial generation’, also known as ‘GenMe’. Much has been made in the media and popular practitioner literature about how the latest generation of workers have a ‘sense of entitlement’ and therefore expect more from the workplace than previous generations. In this paper, we argue that this mainstream view of the sense of entitlement as a concept is problematic and requires a more critical examination. We consider two divergent bodies of literature on the sense of entitlement in relation to generational differences at work – a managerialist approach, which conceptualises sense of entitlement to work–life balance as a negative trait, and a second body, based on the seminal work by Sue Lewis and colleagues, that treats sense of entitlement as a situated process rather than an internal characteristic. We use data from a study of young adults leaving university in the UK, inspired by Sue's work. Our analysis challenges the notion of today's younger workers as more ‘entitled’ than previous generations. This study extends existing research by providing a contextualised analysis of young people's situated accounts of sense of entitlement at work.

Este artículo contribuye a los debates sobre las diferencias generacionales en el trabajo. En particular, ubicamos este estudio dentro de la literatura sobre los valores y las expectativas laborales de la ‘Generación del milenio’, también conocida como ‘Generación Y’, o ‘GenYo’. En los medios de difusión y en la literatura profesional, mucho se ha hablado sobre cómo estageneración tiene un alto ‘sentido de derecho’ y por lo tanto espera mucho más del mundo del trabajo que las generaciones anteriores. En este artículo, sostenemos que este concepto dominante de sentido de derecho tiene varios problemas. Se necesita un examen más crítico. Consideramos dos cuerpos distintos de investigación que tratan de las diferencias generacionales en el sentido de derecho en el trabajo. El primero tiene un enfoque gerencial, en el que se conceptualiza el sentido de derecho como un rasgo negativo. El segundo cuerpo está basado en el trabajo seminal de Sue Lewis y colaboradoras, en el que se trata el sentido de derecho como un proceso situado, en vez de un rasgo innato. Se utilizarán datos de un estudio sobre jóvenes en Gran Bretaña, en el momento de graduarse. Nuestro análisis demuestra que los jóvenes de hoy no tienen más sentido de derecho que generaciones anteriores. Este estudio extiende los hallazgos disponibles al proveer un análisis contextualizado de las narrativas situadas de jóvenes de la generación del milenio sobre el sentido de derecho en el trabajo.

Keywords:

• Generation Y
• sense of entitlement
• work–life balance

Palabras claves:

• Generación del milenio
• sentido de derecho
• equilibrio entre trabajo y vida

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Ian Roper, Elizabeth Cotton, and Carolyn Kagan for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. The first author also wishes to express her deep gratitude to Crispin Catherwood.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour at Middlesex University Business School, London, UK. Her broad research interests include qualitative methodologies and the intersections of gender, age, career, and life course transitions. She has conducted studies exploring work–life balance experiences among university leavers and older workers’ experiences of extended working lives. As a former international student and then a migrant worker, she is also interested in exploring international students’ experiences as temporary migrants in the UK. She is an associate editor of the journal Community, Work and Family.

Janet Smithson is Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK, and a social psychology researcher. Her main research interests include gender and discourse, work–life practices and policies, life course transitions, qualitative methodologies, internet-mediated discourse and communication, organisational change, cohabitation, prenuptial agreements and alternative dispute resolution after separation or divorce.

Notes

† Submission for special issue of Community, Work & Family to celebrate the work and influence of Sue Lewis.