Though management and leadership styles have been investigated somewhat in terms of generations' views on important leader attributes and their own leadership behaviors, little research has been reported on the perspectives of followers and their perceptions of the importance of leadership behaviors. A need exists to quantify for practitioners and other professionals in HRD whether any differences exist among generations with regard to their leadership style preference. Firefighters have recognized generational differences in their profession and the need to account for these differences in their training. There is also a concern for building and training their future leaders. This study is an examination of firefighters and differences that may exist with regard to leadership style preferences in an effort to explain further generational differences in the workplace to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. Respondents were asked to read scenarios of different fire chiefs with characteristics of each leadership style and respond to questions regarding perceptions of each leader and finally choose the chief for whom they would most like to work. An instrument was pilot tested with 80 firefighters in leadership ranks. The instrument was web-based with a Likert-type scale. In this quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive study, there was a total of 330 firefighters in the final sample. A three-way mixed model ANOVA was conducted to determine whether differences existed in perceptions of a leader's style across scenarios based on a firefighter's generational category and rank. The within-subjects factor was the score for leadership style across scenarios with the levels being the three leadership styles of transformational, laissez-faire, and transactional. The between-subjects factors were generational cohort and rank of firefighter. Frequencies and percentages were reported to determine the leader for whom most firefighters would most like to work. When firefighters were presented with three leadership style scenarios, there was a significant difference (p < .05) in the leadership style score for each scenario. There were no significant differences between generation or rank of firefighter with regard to their leadership style score for each scenario. Transformational leadership was the most preferred leadership style of all firefighters, regardless of rank or generational cohort.

With up to four generations working together in today’s workforce, research suggests that managers may feel overwhelmed at the idea of strategically managing the diversity of work values amongst their teams. Many studies suggest practical implications for managing a generationally diverse work force, however strong opposition does exist questioning the impact that generation alone has on work values and management strategy. There exists a lack of research studying how managers themselves perceive these conclusions regarding generational differences in work values, and their effect on how they should manage their teams, an intriguing scenario, as it is them whom the conclusions have been derived for. As such the purpose of this study was to be one of the first to determine the degree to which practicing managers acknowledge common conclusions pertaining to the effect an employee’s generation has on their work values, and it’s relevance in management strategy.   The research followed a deductive approach as existing theories and conclusions were tested with the perceptions of practicing managers. A qualitative design allowed for the researchers to engage with respondents in a way that is not possible through a quantitative survey, avoiding the potential overgeneralizations already perceived by some to be abundant in the field. 11 experienced respondents from a single company within the engineering consultancy industry were interviewed addressing three research questions.   Results of the study revealed that practicing managers do recognize work value differences between generations, showing consistencies with existing research however with some deviations in certain work values.  Analysis of results revealed that generation was not the only contributing factor in these differences. Factors such as age, life stage and career stage, as well as industry trends were also revealed to be factors. Generation was not found to be an important influence on an employee’s individual work values compared to individual traits such as one’s personal upbringing, as well as other external, and dynamic factors. Generation was also not an important consideration when creating project teams. As such, understanding employees as individuals was regarded as more relevant than generation in the context of management strategy. Two preliminary models were developed to illustrate the theories and were updated reflecting the results of the analysis.   The study added to the existing body of knowledge by gaining insight on the idea of generational work value differences from a unique perspective by employing a different methodology than commonly seen in the area.

Stress is ubiquitous for all organisms, however, impacts vary depending on type and strength of the stressor, as well as the organism’s tolerance. Currently, ionizing radiation is described by the “linear no threshold” model. However, considerable research suggests that a hormetic or threshold model may better describe radiation exposure. Using male house crickets the impacts of early-life radiation on life history and reproductive traits, molecular biomarkers, and trans-generational impacts were analyzed. Generally, radiation impacts were best described by non-linear modelling. Multiple aspects of sexual signalling were disrupted by radiation, and impacts emerged in F1 offspring through extended longevity and superior survivorship. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Today, as a result of the improvements especially in the area of medical sciences, conditions of life have changed and the work period has been prolonged. Currently more than one generation has been living together, and even working together. In recent years, it is observed that generationally diverse environments and product or services addressing multi-generational user groups have attracted the attention of particularly the marketing sector and this attention to the generational diversity has become a trend in the design field just as it has in many other areas. This study analyses the design assets of the office environments from the perspective of the important characteristic of the workforce, namely the generational diversity. Designing the office environment by taking only the current and future generations into consideration is not a sufficient way anymore. So, office designers are expected to consider also the older generations existing at the same environment. This trend towards generational diversity has started with the designs and arrangements of home environments / later, due to the advantages it has provided for the organizations&rsquo / success, it has gradually spread towards the designs of office environments. In this study, the work habits of generations have been analyzed initially and then it has been related to the office environments and work cultures. At the end of the study, the effects of multi-generational workforce on the office environment design assets have been discussed.

Retaining and developing high potential managers as part of a leadership pipeline is a critical aspect for business, and understanding not only the strengths these managers bring, but also how they derail and how interventions could be tailored to avoid derailment, or at least lessen the impact, is imperative for sustainable growth. The aim of the research is to highlight differences, if any, between gender and generations, in order to ascertain whether unique developmental programmes or derailment interventions would be required based on an individual's gender and age.

Retaining and developing high potential managers as part of a leadership pipeline is a critical aspect for business, and understanding not only the strengths these managers bring, but also how they derail and how interventions could be tailored to avoid derailment, or at least lessen the impact, is imperative for sustainable growth. The aim of the research is to highlight differences, if any, between gender and generations, in order to ascertain whether unique developmental programmes or derailment interventions would be required based on an individual's gender and age.

Introduction: A population that can live and work longer has resulted in a wider range of generations being active in the workplace simultaneously and the diverse multi-generational work environment is a new challenge for human resource management. The most recent generation that is entering the job market is Generation Y, which is also referred to as Millennials. Currently, organizations and Human Resource departments are facing the issue of Generation Y entering the workforce and the issue at hand is considered to be real. The main focus in this paper is Generation Y and how their work attitudes in the workplace differ or resembles that of the previous generations. Purpose: With this research we want to primarily establish and present our observation of the differences in Generation Y and preceding generations’ work attitudes occurring in multi-generational workplaces, and later evaluate to what extent it is present in the work environment of the chosen business sectors in Sweden. Method: This thesis major applies the deductive approach. Both primary data and secondary data were collected during the research. Primary data was collected through interviews and the secondary data was gathered from Internet resources, books, published articles and journals. Conclusion: The differences between the generations’ work attitude are present within all of the aspects of work attitudes studied excluding individual vs. team orientation where the data was conflicting. Differences in some aspects were more and the potential to cause clash was noticeable and in other aspects there were less differences or personal factors found to be more important than generational factors.

Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / The aim of the study was to identify the retention variables highlighted as most important by call centre agents at a financial institution in the Western Cape. In addition, to assess which of the independent variables they place more importance on; and to determine whether differences exist between the retention variables highlighted as most important by the respective age and gender groups.

The results of this study indicate that the Taiwan managers have a fairly high level of consistency in their preference for both a predominant leadership and conflict resolution style. They prefer a participative style of leadership and an introspective/observant style of conflict resolutions. In addition, the owner/managers studied had a good sense of the reality of their perceptions of their own leadership style. Both of these findings are consistent with what might be expected from Chinese and Confusion Philosophy. However, there the strength of these preferences is not as strong in the younger employees indicating a real generational shift in preferred styles. This is particularly clear in terms of the conflict style where there was an increased preference for a more assertive style or Western style of conflict resolution in younger employees. In addition, there was a clear difference in preferred approach to leadership when leadership was looked at from the transformational/transactional theory approach to leadership. The older manager/owners preferred a transactional leadership approach which is more in line with the paternalistic nature of Chinese management. The traditional Chinese approach to management would have predicted that the transactional leadership approach would dominate. The results of this study supported this expectation but only for the older group and not the younger group. The younger group preferred the transformational approach to leadership which may be argued to be closer to modern Western approaches to leadership. One other finding of particular note was that while the relative strength of conflict and leadership style preferences varied slightly, the generational differences were consistent regardless of whether the intergenerational differences were measured inside the same company or across a variety of companies and the groups of older and younger managers/owners were related by organizational membership or completely independent of each other. The results of this study provide additional insights into the role of preferred leadership and conflict styles within organizations in Taiwan.

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