HOW EXECUTIVES PERCEIVE THE NET GENERATION

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory study of how executives in organizations perceive the entrance of the ‘net generation’ into the workplace. We approached this question by collecting data from interviews, focus groups, and an online survey. The results show that executives perceive tensions associated with values and behaviors of the net generation workers as the younger workers enter current organizational settings as well as technology-related issues not solely associated with the younger generation. The paper discusses the different organizational mechanisms and strategies executives use to address these tensions. Particularly, we discuss executives’ preference for top-down strategies and their tendency to address the triad of technology–values–behavior as separate components instead of a unified concept.

Keywords:

• young people
• web 2.0
• organisational studies
• employment

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the assistance of Nancy Lou in the data collection, David Willer in the early stages of the analysis of the interview data, and the valuable comments of the editors of this special issue on an early version of this paper.

Notes

Quotes are typically from interviews [I] or online survey [S] and coded with the number of the respondent; as examples: I-7 refers to the 7th interview respondent and S-10 refers to the 10th survey respondent. Quotes from the focus group notes are labeled [FG].

On the other hand, a project leader at a high technology firm overheard the authors discussing multitasking. His reaction was more accepting. ‘My most productive programmer watches TV while he is working’, he said, evoking surprise from others in the discussion.

USA, UK, China, India, Russia, Brazil, Italy, Iran, Japan, and Canada.