The generation game

Purpose – Explores the limited value of concepts such as Baby-Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y and advances the view that life course is more valuable. Design/methodology/approach – Examines how young adults in Britain, born between 1975 and 1982, conceptualized the notion of work-life balance as they were about to leave university and enter full-time paid employment. Findings – Reveals that the notion of individual choice strongly underpins young adults’ conceptualization of work-life balance and expectations of work-life balance support; while young British and Asian adults largely considered it to be a matter of individual choice, there were variations in their preferences for how to prioritize their impending employment and personal lives; and four emerging patterns of work-life balance orientation preferences were found – balancer, careerist, career-sacrificer and integrator. Practical implications – Provides support for the argument that the work-life balance perceptions of young adults who would belong to the so-called Generation Y cannot be generalized and simplified as being either work-centric or life-centric. The picture is a lot more complex given the diversity within this group of young adults. Social implications – Highlights how, instead of looking for generational differences (or age-related differences) which can be divisive, it is more useful to look at the issue of multi-generations in a broader way. Originality/value – By using a life-course approach instead of a generational approach, is able to take into account how past transitions have shaped the way work-life balance was discussed by the young adults and how anticipated future transitions were expected by the young adults to change their needs and therefore expectations of employer and government support

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

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’ (Twenge, 2006; 2010). 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 manageralist approach, which conceptualises sense of entitlement to work-life balance (WLB) 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

Focus group methodology in a life course approach – individual accounts within a peer cohort group

This paper explores the use of focus group methodology as part of a life course approach building on Julia Brannen’s pioneering work in these two areas. Much life course research uses individual interviews, including biographical interview techniques. It is less usual to find focus groups used within the life course perspective. This paper draws on a PhD study of young British and Asian adults’ experiences of the transition from university to full-time employment, using focus groups as part of a multi-method approach, within a life course perspective. The study drew explicitly on Julia Brannen’s approach to life course transitions. Three focus group excerpts are presented and discussed to illustrate how focus group data can further the understanding of the ways in which a group of peers discuss the transition to work and especially future work–life balance. We show how focus group discussions about individual choice for future work and ‘life’ or ‘lifestyle’ can highlight shared assumptions of this birth cohort group as well as areas of disagreement and contention, rooted in both individual experiences and societal and socio-cultural expectations. We relate this to Julia Brannen’s conceptualisation of the three different modalities which young people draw on to talk about the future

From theory to impact: bringing work-life initiatives into the mainstream

In this special issue we focus on the work and influence of Sue Lewis, one of the Community, Work and Family’s two founding editors. In launching this journal Sue, together with Carolyn Kagan, aimed to encourage debate and critical examination of, and reflection on, existing perspectives, frameworks and practices (Kagan and Lewis, 2015). They also explicitly aimed “to publish work that challenged the status quo, encouraged personal reflection and reflexivity, and put professional and lay views side by side” (Kagan and Lewis, 2015). For this special issue we invited researchers who have worked with Sue at different stages of her career – from her Ph.D. supervisor (Cary Cooper), some of her international research partners (Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Ellen Kossek), her previous colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University (Carolyn Kagan, Rebecca Lawthom), her national and international research partners on a series of European projects (Julia Brannen, Ann Nilsen, Laura den Dulk, Bram Peper), through to one of Sue’s former Ph.D. students and colleague at Middlesex University (Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya) and early career researchers (Sweta Rajan-Rankin). In the articles that are to follow, the authors draw upon and highlight the considerable and invaluable influences that Sue’s work has had in the field of Community, Work and Family

The impact of global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance: a capabilities perspective

This paper draws on the capabilities approach as a framework for examining the impact of the global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance. Our paper focuses on Greece, an extreme case of a country in economic crisis, characterised by a weak institutional basis. We build on the work of Barbara Hobson and colleagues who first applied the capabilities approach to explore work-life balance capabilities. Our study contributes to the development of theory by emphasising the sense of entitlement concept within the capabilities approach and by proposing a modified conceptual framework that encapsulates the link between capabilities, agency, and the sense of entitlement, where the latter acts as a cognitive ‘filter’ that enhances or weakens an individual’s perception of her/his agency to enact on her/his capabilities. Drawing on the accounts of twenty Greek professional and managerial workers, we illustrate how the crisis and austerity measures have eroded working conditions and thus the sense of entitlement, leading to the weakening of our participants’ agency and capabilities to achieve quality of working life and work-life balance

The impact of global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance: A capabilities perspective

This paper draws on the capabilities approach as a framework for examining the impact of the global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance. Our paper focuses on Greece, an extreme case of a country in economic crisis, characterised by a weak institutional basis. We build on the work of Barbara Hobson and colleagues who first applied the capabilities approach to explore work-life balance capabilities. Our study contributes to the development of theory by emphasising the sense of entitlement concept within the capabilities approach and by proposing a modified conceptual framework that encapsulates the link between capabilities, agency, and the sense of entitlement, where the latter acts as a cognitive ‘filter’ that enhances or weakens an individual’s perception of her/his agency to enact on her/his capabilities. Drawing on the accounts of twenty Greek professional and managerial workers, we illustrate how the crisis and austerity measures have eroded working conditions and thus the sense of entitlement, leading to the weakening of our participants’ agency and capabilities to achieve quality of working life and work-life balance. This is the peer reviewed version of the article to be published in final form by Wiley at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1740-4762. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving

Too much of one and less of the other: graduates' conceptualizations and expectations of work-life balance

What does ‘work-life balance’ (WLB) mean to today’s generation of university graduates and what support do they expect? This thesis examines the relationship between these young people’s conceptualizations of the WLB discourse and their expectations of employer and government WLB support. In recent times, the topic of WLB has gained wide academic and public attention. However, an emergent critical perspective signifies the problematic nature of the WLB discourse (e.g. Lewis, Gambles, & Rapoport, 2007). Furthermore, much of the work-life literature tends to focus on workers who have caring and/or other family responsibilities, thereby confining our understanding of WLB experiences to a particular demographic cohort. Accordingly, this study focuses explicitly on the WLB perspectives and expectations of young British and Asian people who are in transition from university to work and employment. By including young Asian people’s viewpoints, this study provides insight into how young people from this region talk about and conceptualize the WLB discourse. More specifically, the research examines the variability in the ways in which these young people from Western and Eastern contexts make sense of the WLB discourse in the here-and-now Britain as they and their personal, social, and cultural contexts undergo transformation. Thematic analysis was employed on qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted with 30 women and men from the UK, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, all of whom are studying in the UK. Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework of life course theory (Giele & Elder, 1998) and the sense of entitlement concept (Lewis & Smithson, 2001), the analysis suggests that the notion of ‘individual choice’ strongly underpins these young people’s conceptualizations and expectations of the WLB discourse. While most participants largely consider WLB as a matter of individual choice, there are also variations in preferences for how to prioritize their impending employment and personal lives, illustrated in a proposed typology of four emerging WLB orientation preference patterns of ‘balancer’, ‘careerist’, ‘career-sacrificer’, and ‘integrator’. Findings also indicate that the notion of individual choice impacts on the participants’ expectations of employer and government WLB support, where the majority have a low sense of entitlement to such support. Although most participants demonstrate an awareness of the ‘business case’ for employers to adopt WLB initiatives, many question their effectiveness. Instead, there appears to be a stronger sense of entitlement to individual choice. In terms of government WLB support, young people feel disconnected to what the government can do for them. The findings reveal that social comparisons are made among these young British and Asian people at both personal and national levels, which in turn shape perceptions of what kind of external WLB support is feasible, normative, and appropriate for them to expect.Overall, the findings indicate that while individual choice is fundamental in the young people’s conceptualizations and expectations of WLB, the choices that they have are inextricably interlinked with their life course contexts and structural and cultural realities. The thesis highlights the importance of contextualizing meanings and expectations of the WLB discourse in the timing of these young people’s lives as well as their multiple contexts (structural, national, and cultural). It contributes theoretically to the field of work-life research by proposing and developing an integrated theoretical framework of life course theory and sense of entitlement to examine the various ways in which WLB is conceptualized and expectations of external WLB support are formed. Finally, the thesis discusses the theoretical and applied implications of the findings for understanding the diverse WLB expectations of today’s generation of young workers and considers future avenues for research

From ‘balancers’ to ‘integrators’? Young professionals’ talk about ‘work’ and the rest of ‘life’ in the UK

The topic of WLB has gained wide academic and public attention in recent times. However, an emergent critical perspective signifies the problematic nature of the WLB discourse (e.g., Fleetwood, 2007; Lewis et al., 2007). One problem is that much of the current work-life debates and research tend to focus on workers who have caring and/or other family responsibilities, thereby confining our understanding of work and personal life experiences to a particular demographic cohort and phase in the life course. Nevertheless, the WLB discourse is part of a wider context in which today’s young people, not yet in the workforce, develop impressions of what employment will entail

Critical issues in human resource management

Critical Issues in Human Resource Management is a substantial and authoritative multi-author textbook for HRM modules that take a critical approach. It problematises core HRM topics, encouraging sophisticated thinking about HR interventions. - Written by a team of experts primarily at Middlesex University but also from other UK and international institutions - Part 3 is unique in applying HRM practices to specific industry contexts rather than assuming `best practice is universal. This will enable students to think about how different issues might be dealt with differently in, for example, an NHS trust and a hotel - Draws out the importance of state/corporate governance of the workplace and the politics of workplace relations - Integrates students' prior understanding of the key operational aspects of HRM with the wider institutional and social contexts in which they occur - Expands students' knowledge of HR-related theory with wider social and business theory, enabling them to apply critical approaches to HR problem

The effects of flexibilization on social divisions and career trajectories in the UK labour market

The UK has been characterized as a liberalmarket economy with a liberal residual welfare system. Relative to other Western European economies, British workers have low levels of employment protection and limited support from the social security system. Erosion of legal protection and trade union support further accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s. Although employment laws introduced by the ‘New Labour’ government that was in power from 1997 to 2010 and European Directives aimed at protecting part-time and temporary workers have to some extent alleviated the problems associated with the flexibilization of work, employment protection remains low, which particularly affects young people entering the labour market and older people on the cusp of retirement