This present study examined the structural validity of a Chinese version of Multidimensional Work Ethic Profile (MWEP-C), using a large sample of Chinese parents and their young adult children (N = 1047). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to evaluate the model fit of sample data on three competing models using two randomly split stratified subsamples. Measurement invariance for these two generational respondents was checked using differential item functioning (DIF) analysis. The results indicated that MWEP-C provided a reasonable fit for the sample data and the majority of survey items produced similar item-level responses for individuals that do not differ on the attributes of work ethic across these two generations. DIF items were detected based on advanced and successive iterations. Monte Carlo simulations were also conducted for creating threshold values and for chi-square probabilities based on 1,000 replications. After identifying the DIF items, model fit improved and generational differences and similarities in work ethic between parents and their young adult children were also identified. The results suggested that the younger Chinese generations have higher work ethic mean scores on the dimensions of work centrality and morality/ethics while they have similarities on time concept, self-reliance, delay of gratification, and hard work as their parents.

From Far Gone, Back is a short story collection that explores multigenerational families living in and around the changing landscape of Atlanta, GA. It asks what comes of the decisions we are forced to make for those around us and ourselves while surviving the best way we know how.

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This dissertation is about the changing imaginations of academic social work in an increasingly entangled world. Broadly, my subject area is the history and philosophy of social work, with an emphasis on engagements with critical social theory. More specifically, my research explores questions of discipline, generation, and critical social theory in the Anglophone Canadian context as a means to better understand how shared perceptions of the possible and the desirable are “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988). To do so, I trace and theorize changing perceptions through a survey of educators, and through integrative interdisciplinary and philosophical knowledge work considering various dynamics of disciplines in general and social work in particular. Evoking my own generational standpoint, I raise as a collective disciplinary problematic the canonization of second generation critical social theories, and the need to engage in the collective work of disciplinary reflexivity on, and accountability to, the ways in which the conditions of existence and possibility of critical academic social work are changing over time. Methodologically, I elaborate a reparative historical practice through a slightly different genre or style of writing. This is a feminist strategy, one roughly within the (generational) turn towards showing what one combines and assembles and learns through engaging with the world as a means to invite further speculative and imaginative work. This strategy is also a means to begin to imagine a “post-expert,” “post-good” and “post-progress” social work, not because knowledge and intention do not matter, but because these organizing referents have each achieved a level of saturation in what they can produce in the world. As such, this dissertation contributes some of the conditions of intelligibility necessary for the collective work of imagining and reimagining something akin to justice or improvement through social work after the fall of so many left and liberal progress narratives. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This research explores changing understandings of how social work in the Canadian state context imagines and intervenes in the world. My focus is on academic social work as both educator and knowledge producer, because the university is where some ideas and practices are refined and reproduced so that they can in turn be shared more broadly. Findings include the noteworthy influence of the university on the ideas and initiatives that do gain traction, as well as a generational structural to perceptions of the possible and the desirable. Overall, this research contributes a range of resources—historical, theoretical, empirical and speculative—to the collective work of imagining and reimagining social work for a changing world.

Employment figures and population demographics indicate that Baby Boomers (1946-1964) hold a small and shrinking share of school principalships. The oldest Baby Boomer principals began to retire during the middle of the 1990s, and their void created an opportunity for younger Baby Boomers and members of Generation X (1965-1981) to replace them. The youngest Baby Boomer principals are beginning to retire, and Millennial Generation (1982-2000) administrators are stepping up to fill the ranks. Millennial Generation educators have been in the field long enough to develop the requisite classroom teaching experience, graduate school master's level education, and training needed to obtain administrative positions. Principals develop their leadership skills through the assistant principal experience, and because Millennials are a relatively new addition to the ranks of assistant principals, little is known about their perceptions' of the challenges and rewards of the principalship. Generational differences between Generation Xers and Baby Boomers have been investigated by other researchers, but this study was unique because it directly compared Generation X and Millennial Generation assistant principals. The study explored Generation X and Millennial Generation assistant principals' perceptions of the challenges and rewards of the principalship. This qualitative study involved 12 assistant principal participants, and the analysis of the coded interview transcript data produced major coded themes with valuable implications regarding the participants' motivations, career ambitions, professional development needs, and their perceptions' of the principalship. This study indicated that Generation X and Millennial Generation assistant principals have distinct similarities and differences, and school division superintendents who understand the generational differences may make more informed leadership and personnel decisions about their future principals. The findings and implications were intended to assist superintendents and personnel/human resource directors in their efforts to recruit, select, support, and ultimately promote Generation X and Millennial Generation assistant principals to the principalship. The findings of this study suggested opportunities for researchers to continue the investigation of the topic. / Ed. D.

La mobilité économique est une des aspirations de toute société moderne, mais comment peut-on savoir la véritable évolution de la mobilité sociale ? C’est-à-dire : 1) peut-on mesurer la mobilité sociale avec les données ou la technologie disponibles aujourd’hui? 2) Quelles sont les tendances de la mobilité sociale qui a traversées la génération actuelle? Ou encore 3) à quel point la société actuelle est-elle mobile par rapport aux anciennes générations? Ce sont les trois questions à la base de cette thèse. Nous soutenons ici que c’est possible de connaître encore plus sur l’évolution de la mobilité sociale en restreignant son analyse à quelques dimensions dans le champ de l’économie : le revenu et l’éducation. Le première article s’attaque au problème du manque des données nécessaires pour l’analyse des dynamiques du revenu à l’intérieur d’une génération. Il est avéré que les données longitudinales sont rares et très peu disponibles dans la plupart des pays, ce qui est vrai même pour les pays développés ! Nous avons essayé d’assembler ce casse-tête par des approches méthodologiques récentes, telles que les «panels synthétiques», une méthodologie normalement utilisée pour l’analyse des dynamiques de la pauvreté. Les articles deux et trois décrivent, plus spécifiquement, les tendances à long terme de la mobilité économique pour le revenu et pour l’éducation, respectivement. Le deuxième papier s’occupe de la mobilité intra-générationnelle, tandis que le troisième est dédié à la mobilité intergénérationnelle. Tous les deux répondent aux questions deux et trois posées plus en haut, en cherchant d’améliorer la façon dont la dimension temporaire est incluse dans l’analyse du bien-être économique, ceci avec pour but de reproduire l’effet d’un film fait avec plusieurs clichés. Cette thèse cherche à élargir le savoir expérimental sur la mobilité économique, vu que la plupart des études ne prennent en compte que quelques années de mobilité intra-générationnelle ou à peine quelque génération. En outre, la plupart des résultats des expériences existantes font référence aux pays scandinaves ou à des pays fortement industrialisés. Pour cette thèse nous avons donc pris l’exemple du Mexique, mais les approches et les principes méthodologiques utilisés pourront être appliqués à n’importe quel autre pays. Les chemins de nos vies sont dans un mouvement perpétuel : par monts et par vaux. Dans une société démocratique, il semble utile de savoir si notre appartenance sociale nous permet de nous en sortir malgré nos origines, ou si au contraire, notre destin est voué à l’échec à cause d’elles. Il nous faut en effet, des résultats empiriques pour répondre à ces délibérations. Cette thèse est peut-être une invitation osée à mettre en marche cette conversation. / Economic mobility constitutes a social aspiration in many modern societies however do we really know the actual evolution of social mobility? In other words: 1) how can we measure economic mobility with the data available or with the technology at hand? 2) What are the trends of economic mobility experienced by the current generation? Moreover 3) how mobile is a society relative to previous generations? These questions motivate this dissertation. The complexity of these issues may derive in some sort of paralysis but it is claimed here that it may be possible to learn something about its evolution by restricting analysis to a couple of key dimensions within the economic discipline: income and education. This is the scope followed by this research. The first paper in this dissertation is devoted to deal with the lack of the required data to examine the income dynamics within one generation. It is well known that longitudinal data is often scarce and is seldom available in many countries. This is the case even in well-developed countries! This conundrum has been partially addressed through recent methodological approaches by the so-called synthetic panels. The second part of this dissertation is entirely devoted to applied research. More specifically, the second and third papers describe long run trends of economic mobility in income and education respectively. The former is devoted to intra-generational mobility while the later is devoted to inter-generational mobility. Each of them address the second and third interrogations referred above. In a way this dissertation attempts to improve the addition of the time dimension in the analysis of economic wellbeing. It attempts to produce the effect of a motion picture by the use multiple snapshots. The trends contained herein are far from being perfect and complete but they are based on the use of extensive data and multiple methods covering three decades and the same number of generations in each case. This research expects to expand our knowledge on the empirics of economic mobility as most of the studies refer to few years of intra-generational mobility or to a couple of generations only. Furthermore, most of the empirical evidence available refers to Nordic and highly industrialized countries. Mexico is the canvas of this work but the approaches and principles followed here could be easily mimicked elsewhere. The roads of our lives are constantly moving: rising and falling. In a democratic context, it is useful to know, whether our society provides the chance to get ahead regardless of our origins, or whether this chance is ruled or doomed by them. Empirical evidence is needed to foster these deliberations. This dissertation may well be an invitation to sustain this kind conversation.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management reported the productivity levels of the American multigenerational workforce decreasing as leaders strive to actively engage employees to improve organizational output. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore what leadership strategies federal government managers use to engage a multigenerational workforce. The conceptual framework consisted of Kahn's employee engagement theory and Strauss and Howe's generational cohort theory. The sample consisted of 3 federal government managers within metro Atlanta, Georgia who had successfully managed a multigenerational workforce, demonstrated through the feedback they received from their employees. Data were collected using face-to-face semistructured interviews and a review and analysis of company documents. Data analysis consisted of applying Yin's 5 step data analysis process, and member checking and methodological triangulation of the data strengthened the trustworthiness of interpretations. Emergent themes included generational differences; strategies for working with multigenerational differences; and strategies for engaging a multigenerational workforce. The most effective strategies involved training, communication skills, and team building. Findings from this study may contribute to social change by providing federal government managers with the framework for understanding and engaging its multigenerational workforce, which can result in promoting positive relationships between coworkers, families, and communities. Positive relationships in the workforce may increase employee morale and motivation and decrease employee turnover and the unemployment rate.