“I Value Collaboration but Won’t Get Pushed Around”: Uncovering Tensions in Millennials’ Vocational Anticipatory Socialization

Abstract

The present research aims to understand why there have been inconsistent reports about millennials’ workplace behaviors by exploring discourses rooted in their vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS). Drawing on focus group interviews with 74 matriculating millennials, four dialectical tensions emerged from their discussions around work: (1) prioritizing self- versus other-oriented values; (2) career progression as flexible versus rigid; (3) managing clear versus blurred relational boundaries; and (4) meaning of work based on self-sufficiency versus self-actualization. Authors discuss the implications of foregrounding tensions in theorizing VAS as processes of making sense of inconsistent messages about work and career, as well as practical considerations regarding millennials’ experience with VAS tensions.

Keywords:

• Focus Groups
• Millennials
• Qualitative Research
• Tensions
• Vocational Anticipatory Socialization

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Manuscript History/Grant Information

An earlier version of this manuscript was accepted for presentation at the Southern States Communication Association’s annual conference in 2020 (canceled due to COVID-19) and recognized as a Top Four Paper in the Applied Communication Division. This work was partially supported by a grant from the The Leonard and Gretchan Broom Center for Demography at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Notes

1. See Table 1 for the abbreviated codes for TV series analyzed for the study. What comes after the TV code indicates a participant number in the given focus group session. For instance, TW-P2 means participant two in a focus group organized for Teen Wolf.