A question of generation? – Conflicts between generations

INKOVEMA Newsletter

Mediation and conflict management

# 45

Focus topic:

– A question of generation?! – Conflicts between generations

– Old and young

– Stories about generations

– Generational conflicts in the world of business and labour

Old and young

„What kind of world do we want to live in? In a world in which „old“ and „young“, „rigid“ and „mobile“, „full“ and „hungry“ and „open“ and „closed“ hostile to each other, between people and within individual people themselves? Or in a living now in which all these poles interact dynamically instead of neutralising each other? But we cannot achieve this interaction by merely philosophising about it. We need shared spaces, forums and institutions, both analogue and digitalwhere the old and the young, the agile and the rigid, the full and the hungry mingle. Where the same topics and problems are discussed and practically tackled from both young and old perspectives…“ from „The rebel in us“ by Rebekka Reinhard and Tomas Vasek, Hohe Luft, N.6/2019 Read more

They feel neither the Generation X belonging, but also not as Millenial? Then you are a XENNIAL, thinks Amy Stock.

  • Xennials: Micro-Generation Born Between 1977-1983 Link
  • Xennials: Introduction on Mamamia  Link
  • Generation Z: All about Generation Z by Prof Christian Scholz. www.die-gen-eration-z.de (with many more links.)
  • Generation Z: A meta-study by TripleATeam. Link
  • Generation Z: …more pessimistic than ever before. (Comparisons left open are always so ambiguous ;-)! Link
  • „Ok, Boomer! “ – was the answer at the social platform TikTokafter a white-haired man in a baseball cap and polo shirt says: „The Millennials and the Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndromethey never want to grow up “ Link

Generational conflicts in the world of business and labour

  • Generations XYZ – generations on the labour market. Link
  • 6 Podcasts, which describe the identified generations in detail, characterise them with a view to the world of work – and elaborate on the differences between these generations. Link
  • Expectations of Generation Z to the labour market. Link
  • Short contribution to the Conflict situation in organisations in the business and working world, which deals with the „generation question“. Link
  • Contribution to the special Conflict between generations. Link

The generational myth

Martin Schröder: The generational myth, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 3/2018

Martin Schröder has done the work of systematically analysing the literature on generational differences and has found that nothing has been systematically researched and evaluated here, but merely based on gut feeling and experience. Instead of loose (stories, associations), there’s with him strict thinking (logic, science).

Extract: It somehow seems to be a human need to ascribe new characteristics to young people every now and then. Even in ancient Greece, there are already some very famous writings - young people today are so and so - and of course it's always about older people saying that they were somehow much more hard-boiled than young people in the past. Maybe that's what we're still seeing. But there may be a second reason: There are two effects that we can confuse as generational effectsone is that with the progression of calendar time, i.e. 1980, year 2000, year 2020, certain attitudes change in society as a whole. For example, they are all tending to become more liberal. Thirty years ago, hardly anyone would have said, of course gays should get married, and nowadays that's a completely normal opinion. And of course that can easily be confused with generational differences. You could say that if I had done the survey in the 1980s, the results would have been completely different to what they are now, so we must have a generation now. But this has actually changed for almost everyone, and this is often not taken into account. A second effect is that all people change their attitudes as they get olderThis means that the older people now have different attitudes to the younger people now. But then it's easy to stand up and say, yes, yes, this Generation Y nowadays, they all have this and that attitude. But that's not because they're a certain generation, it's just that they're a certain age. When we were so young, we probably had pretty similar attitudes, we've just suppressed them in the meantime.