Effect of Generation Gap on Organizational Commitment: A Case Study of Ferro-alloy Industries in India

Abstract

This research is intended to investigate the possible differences in the levels of commitment between Generation X (GenX) and Generation Y (GenY) employees in the fast-changing working environment of the twenty-first century. The research also aims to explore the direction and strength of relationships between the two age groups with respect to their commitment towards organization. This study was conducted by using cross-sectional quantitative research method involving 384 participants from five ferro-alloy industries in Odisha, India. The results indicated that GenY employees had a higher normative commitment (NC) to organization than GenX employees, whereas GenX employees had a higher continuance commitment (CC) to organization than GenY employees. However, it is also found that there is no significant difference in affective commitment (AC) between older and younger generation people. This research contributes to the theory of generation gaps with respect to organizational commitment (OC) and opens up new avenues for future research in this field.

Keywords

Generational difference GenX GenY organizational commitment India ferro-alloy

Introduction

Since 1960s, when the term ‘generational gap’ was first coined to describe the differences between generations, there have been different learning experience and challenges to minimize the ripples in the workplace caused by their generational differences. The generation term may be defined as the totality of individuals of the same age, living in the same era. Generations are influenced by social, political and economic conditions. These conditions lead the members of a generation to manifest similar characteristics and to behave on the basis of common value judgements (Borges, Manuel, Elam & Jones, 2006). Today’s modern workplace environment encourages employees from many different generations to work side by side and closely both with people who are as young as their children and as old as their parents. Decision-makers are now trying to understand each generation to increase productivity, morale and employee retention (Kogan, 2007). Nowadays merit is becoming a more critical factor than tenure (longevity) as the deciding factors for promotion and appraisal. However, couple of decades ago, multiple generations had worked in the same organization, but they were usually separated from each other by virtue of their job descriptions and job hierarchy. Middle-aged employees tended to be in middle management, where as younger workers were at the entry level. Each employee in the set-up was mostly with their peers or one level up, with their supervisor (Kogan, 2007). Generational mixing was very rare. When experienced old employees made decisions, the decisions were handed down and communicated to the younger workers through the line supervisor. There was no sharing of information about how decisions were made, the strategy behind the decision and any requests for feedback (Martin & Tulgan, 2002). This management practice was based on a top-down bureaucratic approach (Hogan, Curphy & Hogan, 1994). The top-down management and leadership practices were largely influenced by the leaders at the top of the hierarchy. They direct and control all activities of the people working below in the structure. It is popularly known as the feudalism paradigm (Barker, 1997). Now, situations and work environments are changing quite fast (Galambos, 2005; Lim, Griffiths & Sambrook, 2010). Many organizations are following a flat organizational structure to reduce bureaucratic approach and to enhance work flexibility and decision-making capabilities of employees. Therefore, it is now crucial for each organization to understand the mindsets of each generation of employees working under one roof to improve the productivity and brand image of the organization.

From the above discussion, it is understood that ‘Generation’ as a construct is elusive. The definition of ‘Generation’ is mainly influenced by the environment consisting up personality, values, beliefs and expectations of the people. The generation classification for this study is defined based on political, historical and cultural aspects of the study area. The generations are classified in four groups depending on their significant characteristics (Erickson, 2009; Roongrerngsuke, 2010), namely, ‘Traditionalists’ (1940–1950), ‘Baby Boomers’ (born between 1946 and 1964), ‘Generation X’ (GenX) (born between 1964 and 1979) and ‘Generation Y’ (GenY) (Nexters, Echo Boomers, Millenials, Trophy Generation or born between 1980 and 2000). The main characteristics of the generation of our research interest, that is, GenX and GenY, are described below.

Generation X

Generation X was born between 1964 and 1980. They often had both parents working. They were also exposed to many social problems like daycare and isolation. These children are known as ‘latchkey kids’, since they open the doors to their homes by themselves because most of the time both their parents are at work. They are well-educated with many qualifications and certifications. They are also resourceful, individualistic, self-reliant and skeptical of authority. They are also not interested in long-term careers, corporate loyalty or status symbols. In the workplace, their main focuses are on relationships, outcomes and skills. They used to change employer and careers frequently, if they are not satisfied or unhappy.

The members of GenX witness their workaholic parents fired from their jobs and/or belong to families with problems due to failure to maintain work–life balance. Generation X grows under financially and socially insecure conditions where rapid change occurs. The positive characteristics of this generation are multitasking, peace attained by adapting to change and differences, technical competence, creativity, innovativeness, independence and creation of practical solutions in problem-solving (Smola & Sutton, 2002; Southard & Lewis, 2004; Srinivasan, 2012). The main characteristics of GenX are summarized in Table 1 (Balc & Bozkurt, 2013; Blauth, McDaniel, Perrin & Perrin, 2011; Erickson, 2009; Jorgensen, 2003; Roongrerngsuke, 2010; Srinivasan, 2012).

Table 1.

Characteristics of Generation X and Generation Y

Generation X	Generation Y
Cynical, alienated, pessimistic, individualistic and depressed	Alienated, cynical, individualistic and self-serving
Comfortable with change and diversity, but rarely remains loyal to a company	Comfortable with change and views job security as unimportant
Likely to search for more challenging work and better pay	Have high expectations, high need for praise, and difficulty with criticism; demands creative opportunities; job-hops; abhors ethics scandals; and prefers one casual dress
Bend the rules to get things done	Personal values and goals are more important than the ones related to work
Values personal and professional live equally	Personal values and goals are more important than the ones related to work
Autonomy and independence are important values	Seek building a more tolerant and open society
Prefer open communication and believe in the balance between life and work	Have a strong morality and patriotism
Seek a shared goal (GenX is especially inspired by visions of business places)	Do not commit themselves to their companies for a long period; however, they have personal commitment towards employees and favour inclusive management

Generation Y

Generation Y people are those born between 1980 and 2000 and are also known as the Millennium or Net Generation. Millennials are very technology savvy and are comfortable with ethnically diverse groups. They are also called the ‘Trophy Kids’ because of the opportunity to contribute and perform regardless of their capability. They are often awarded with some kind of a certificate or award even just for their participation in the competition. However, on the other hand, GenX people receive credit only when they win. Generation Y kids are always praised by their parents and teachers for their high levels of hope and expectations. Generation Y kids do multitasking in their approach and are involved in many activities simultaneously. They are also known as the ‘over-scheduled’ generation. The major characteristics of GenX and GenY are presented in Table 1 (Balc & Bozkurt, 2013; Blauth et al., 2011; Erickson, 2009; Jorgensen, 2003; Roongrerngsuke, 2010; Srinivasan, 2012).

Organizational Commitment

Over the years, the concept of organizational commitment (OC) has become popular among the researchers of organizational and industrial psychology (Cohen, 2003). Organizational commitment is a psychological construct that has been described and operationalized for more than a decade. Organizational commitment is employee’s commitment to the organization. Commitments are developed naturally and can be in the form of the nature of relationship between an employee and the variety of entities in the organization. Organizational commitment has been defined as a psychological state that characterizes an employee’s relationship with an organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Mohapatra & Sharma, 2008; Pathardikar & Sahu, 2011). The construct of OC has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Most of the past research works related to OC can be viewed in terms of the attitudinal versus behavioural conceptualization. Porter, Steers, Mowday and Boulian (1974) defined OC as the relative strength of an individual’s identification with involvement in a particular organization. Meyer and Allen (1984) later used the term ‘Affective commitment (AC)’ to describe an employee’s emotional attachment with an organization. Recently, this concept has attracted more attention from organizational researchers due to the changes taking place in different dimensions of employment practices around the globe (Kuo, 2013; Sullivan & Arthur, 2006).

Organizational commitment research has received a great deal of attention from the organizational behaviourists (e.g., Allen & Meyer, 1990). In sales and marketing, it is considered as an important central construct in understanding the salespersons’ behaviour. The researchers feel that by understanding commitment, the organizations will be in a better position to anticipate the impact of a particular policy or practice in the organization (Bergmann, Lester, De Meuse & Grahn, 2000; Meyer & Allen, 1990). Generally, OC is a subjective measure that captures the employees’ perceptions of (1) their identification with their organization’s core values, (2) their intent to stay with their organization and (3) their willingness to exert more effort than expected by their organization (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979). This leads to another type of OC called ‘Continuance Commitment (CC)’. Continuance commitment refers to the commitment employees experience towards organization because of investments they have made or because of the costs associated with leaving the organization (Dipboye, Smith & Howell, 1994; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). This form of commitment develops when the employees realize that they have accumulated investments and they would lose if they left the organization. Recently, many studies have explored the effect of CC on different work dimensions (Gunlu, Aksarayli & Perçin, 2011; Ünal, 2013).

One of the differences between AC and CC is that the employees with high AC stay with the organization because they want to, while employees with high CC stay because they have to (Meyer, Allen & Gellatly, 1990). In 1991, Meyer and Allen (1991) have identified a third dimension of OC called normative commitment (NC). This form of commitment concerns a feeling of (moral) obligation to remain in the organization. What is common in these three dimensions is that they all indicate the extent to which employees are willing to remain in an organization. Organizational commitment is essential for achieving organizations challenging goals (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck & Alge, 1999). These goals require more effort and have lower chances of success (Latham, 2007). Organizational commitment has been conceptualized as a psychological state or mindset that binds individuals with the organization to achieve one or more targets (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005; Ünal, 2013). Therefore, from the above discussion, the three major types of commitment can be summarized as follows:

‘Affective commitment’ refers to the employee’s identification or strong emotional attachment and involvement to the organization.

‘Continuance commitment’ refers to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization.

‘Normative commitment’ reflects an obligation to continue with the organization.

Usually, commitment is viewed as the commitment to an organization represented by the top management and its goals and values (Meyer & Allen, 1997). Organizational commitment is an important issue in today’s highly competitive business environment. As the business firms increasingly rely on their human capital (knowledge workforce), they force to give them a sustainable competitive edge by facilitating/providing training and support to keep pace with rapid technological advancements, education advancements, workforce diversity, organizational restructuring and the new ways of doing business. Similarly in the last 10–15 years, the ferro-alloy industries in India (particularly in Odisha) are experiencing change in terms of increased competition, greater client demands, higher insurance and litigation costs as well as the declining staff productivity due to globalization and digitalization. To cope with global business pressure, ferro-alloy industries in Odisha must increase the employee’s productivity and ownership by improving the employee commitment toward their job and organization. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess different factors related to generation, which affect the OC of workers working in five ferro-alloy industries of Odisha.

Literature Survey

In the past, many ferro-alloy companies adopted the principles of top-down organizational management and leadership framework for cost-driven human resource policies. These policies treated employees as another resource to achieve organizational goals (Lucas & Deery, 2004). Therefore, human resources should be utilized as effectively and as efficiently as other resources to achieve organizational goals. In the same time, top management should treat employees as human (Lucas & Deery, 2004; Ogaard, Marnburg & Larsen, 2007). However, in recent years, significant changes have taken place in the workplace. Therefore, most industries are slowly changing their styles of management practices. Ogaard et al. (2007) suggest that managers are more likely to perceive the work environment as more participative compared to their employees. This difference in perception is just one of the many that affect organizational effectiveness and commitment. One of the factors that are likely to significantly influence employee’s job satisfaction and their commitment to work is their work values. Thus, the interest in the examination of values has received considerable attention for many decades. Work values are very important in determining employee behaviours (Chu, 2007; Kim, Shin & Umbreit, 2007; White, 2006). Chu (2007) argues that understanding employees’ values is very important because the degree to which employees value their job influences their attitudes towards work. Work value has been changed from generation to generation due to change in social, cultural and technological changes with time. It has been observed that GenY and GenX both equally value to extrinsic rewards. However, GenY employees are less likely to value an intrinsically rewarding job compared to GenX. Family influences on young workers gives insight into generational changes in work values. Kids understanding of work and employment is largely influenced by their parents’ employment and economic condition (Campbell, Twenge, Lance & Hoffman, 2010). It was also observed that children’s perceptions of parental work attitudes and experiences greatly influence the development of their own work beliefs and attitudes (Barling & Loughlin, 2001).

Researchers and social scientists use the term ‘generation’ to refer to people born in the same general time span and share important historical or social life experiences (Kupperschmidt, 2000; Smola & Sutton, 2002). The effects of those life experiences remain with them over the course of their lives (Smola & Sutton, 2002). Therefore, each generation develops a unique personality due to these distinct key life experiences. These personalities determine their feelings towards authority and organization (Kupperschmidt, 2000; Smola & Sutton, 2002). For example, members of generations born and live in lean times or war years tend to think and act differently than those born and lived in peace and abundance. The developed personality is also likely to determine what an individual want from his work. It also determines theirs preferences of workplace environment and how they plan to achieve those they want and desire. On the other hand, these needs and desires tend to vary from generation to generation due to generational gaps. Therefore, people from different generations may have problems understanding others’ priorities and preferences of the work. Even though classifications of generations and the time span used have been inconsistent, behavioural sociologists suggest that each generation lasts approximately two decades and the next generation comes into its place (Schaeffer, 2000; Shepard, 2004).

Although anecdotal accounts suggest age-related differences in the levels of organizational citizenship behaviour and commitment between generations, there are limited empirical research works supporting these propositions. In particular, a significant research gap exists in examining OC, behaviour and generational differences. The general literature commonly depicts trust as a precursor to commitment (Tan & Tan, 2000), but the existing age-related research seems to focus only on differences in commitment. McGuinnes (2000) looked at generational differences in commitment levels and found no significant difference in the level of OC between GenX and GenY. De Meuse, Bergmann and Lester (2001) investigated the extent to which perceptions of the psychological contract at work have changed during the past few decades. They found people perceived that the contract has changed over time.

Now, all organizations recognize that the tension at the workplace is detrimental. In today’s hierarchically flat organizations, cross-generational tensions will inhibit teamwork, cripple communication and severely limit an organization’s effectiveness and performance. This is something that many organizations cannot afford if they want to remain economically viable in the current economic climate. However, the employees of different generations understand each other better, and collaborate more effectively at their workplace. Many experts have offered opinion on issues related to ‘understanding’ and ‘engaging’ GenY employees at work, but relatively fewer have actually used an empirical approach to study the nature of cross-generational perception and commitment in workplace. The current challenge for researchers is to explore whether commitments are different among GenX and GenY employees. It may be that there is no commitment differences existing between GenY employees and the employees born before GenY. If generational differences in commitment do exist, what interventions need to occur in the workplace? This exploratory research study aims to address these gaps in the Indian context.

Research Design

Participants

A non-probability sampling design in the form of a convenient sampling method was adopted and considered to gather information for this study. The employees of five ferro-alloy industries in Odisha participated in this study. Initially, 550 questionnaires were administered of which 384 questionnaires were returned yielding a response rate of above 69 per cent. According to Sekaran (2000), a response rate of 30 per cent is regarded as acceptable for most research purposes. This good response rate can be attributed to the interest of plant managers and the short and simple questionnaire used this study.

From Table 2, it is clear that the majority of respondents are male representing over 74 per cent of the sample. Majority of the respondents are non-executives (79 per cent). More than half of the respondents (53 per cent) are married. The study sample contains 50 per cent GenY population aged between 14 and 34 and 45 per cent GenX population aged between 35 and 50. The mean age of GenX and GenY respondents is 28.6 and 39.4, respectively.

Table 2.

Demographic Information of the Sample

Attribute	Characteristics	n	(%)
Gender	Male	283	74
	Female	101	26
Job Level	Executive	82	21
	Non-executive	302	79
	Below 14	0	0
Age	14–34 (Gen Y)	193	50
	35–50 (Gen X)	174	45
	Above 50	17	5
Marital Status	Bachelor	182	47
	Married	202	53

Source: Author’s own findings.

Measuring Instruments

A self-developed questionnaire was used to obtain the demographic information relevant to this study. Participants were asked to furnish the information with regard to their gender, job level, age, marital status, tenure, job category, etc. In addition to that, the Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS) (Meyer & Allen, 1991) was used to measure the variables of concern to this study.

Organizational Commitment Scale

The questionnaire (OCS) used in this study is an 18 item instrument designed by Meyer and Allen (1993). Responses to each of the 18 items were rated using a five-point Likert rating scale with anchors labeled: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree and 5 = strongly agree. Several studies have examined the reliability (alphas) of the OCS. Strong evidence for the reliability and validity of the OCS scale has been reported from different researchers around the globe (Chen & Francesco, 2003; Cheng & Stockdale, 2003; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch & Topolnytsky, 2002). Examples of items from the OCS questionnaire include: (i) AC (I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization); (ii) CC (it would be very hard for me to leave my organization right now even if I want to); and (iii) NC (this organization deserves my loyalty).

Proposed Model

Figure 1 shows the relationship diagram of the proposed model.

Past research works have shown that age is positively related to OC (Angle & Perry, 1981; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Steers, 1977). One possible reason for this relationship is that there are few employment options available to older employees (Mowday et al., 1979) and older employees realize that leaving may cost them more than staying with the current employer (Parasuraman & Nachman, 1987). Thus, the following objectives are set for this research to relate different work force generations with different dimensions of OC:

Will generation gap impact on affective commitment (AC) of an employee?

Will generation gap impact on continuance commitment (CC) of an employee?

Will generation gap impact on normative commitment (NC) of an employee?

Figure 1.

Source: Author’s own.

Data Analysis

The data analysis techniques chosen for this research are based on their applicability to the exploratory nature of the research design. Descriptive and inferential statistics are used to analyze the data. For inferential statistical analysis, structural equation modelling (SEM) method is used. Structural equation modelling is an integrated approach to the factors analysis, structural models and path analysis (Solimun, 2003).

Factor Analysis

The first task of this analysis is to check the factor structures of the constructs and confirm them with the original studies. The exploratory factor analysis is conducted to test the three factor OC model (Mayer & Allen, 1991) on the collected data. It yields three factors as shown in Table 3. All the factor loadings in Table 3 are at an acceptable level, that is, more than 0.5. Therefore, the three factor model of OCS suggested by Meyer and Allen (1997) is confirmed by our data under Indian condition. The second-order loading factors of each construct are greater than 0.8 (Table 3), which shows the consistencies of the instrument used for this research.

Table 3.

Result of Factor Analysis for Organizational Commitment

Construct	Indicator	First-order Loading	Second-order Loading
Affective Commitment	AC1	0.76	0.84
	AC2	0.82
	AC3	0.71
Continuance Commitment	CC1	0.78	0.81
	CC2	0.68
	CC3	0.83
Normative Commitment	NC1	0.87	0.85
	NC2	0.85
	NC3	0.79
	NC4	0.68

Source: Author’s own findings.

Table 4.

Descriptive Statistics of Organizational Commitment

Variables		Mean	Std. Dev.	Cronbach’s Coefficients (α)	N
Affective Commitment	GenX	3.42	0.93	0.75	384
	GenY	3.36	0.88
Continuance Commitment	GenX	3.53	0.56	0.72	384
	GenY	3.09	0.62
Normative Commitment	GenX	3.10	0.91	0.78	384
	GenY	3.72	0.89

Source: Author’s own findings.

The factor reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha), means and standard deviations are shown in Table 4. All the reliability scores are above 0.7 and thus considered as a good instrument (Nunnally, 1978).

Even though exploratory factor analysis provides a measure of convergent and discriminate validity of constructs, it does not test for possible error correlations among items. Therefore, a measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis for each construct is developed. The model fit indices such as χ² statistics (χ²₍₂₎) = 4.63, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.92, normed fit index (NFI) = 0.91, Root Means Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.054 and incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.81 are obtained from the analysis. However, the standard values for CFI > 0.95 constitute a good fit and value > 0.9 constitute an acceptable fit (Medsker, Williams & Holahan, 1994). For RMSEA, it has been suggested that values <0.05 constitute a good fit, values in the range of 0.05–0.08 acceptable fit, values in the range of 0.08–0.10 marginal fit, and values > 0.1 poor fit (Browne & Cudeck, 1992). Joreskong and Sorbom (1989) found that chi-square/df ≤ 3, CFI > 0.9 and 0 < IFI < 1 provide a reasonable good fit for the data. In this study, the obtained values for the above parameters are satisfying the condition for a good fit. Therefore, the three factor model of OC is conformed a good fit for our data.

Inferential Statistics

After verification of consistencies and reliabilities of the instrument, the evaluation of the structural equation model puts the focus on the relationship between latent variables. Table 5 shows the result of the structural equation model, p-values and t-value. The results of this structure equation model are reliable because most of the standard errors are less than 0.1.

Table 5 shows that CC (p-value = 0.02) and NC (p-value = 0.00) are all less than p = 0.05, which means that there are significant impacts of generation gap on these two components of OC. However, on the other hand, the test failed to find any impact of generation gap on AC (p-value = 0.52 > 0.05). Finally, it is found that generation gaps have no impact on AC, but the effect of generation gap was found in the case of CC and NC.

Table 5.

Path Statistics Using Structural Equation Modelling

Path	t-value	p-value	Result
Generation Gap → AC	3.34	0.52	No Impact
Generation Gap → CC	2.23	0.02	Impact
Generation Gap → NC	2.43	0.00	Impact

Source: Author’s own findings.

Discussion

Affective commitment refers to the employee’s identification or strong emotional attachment and involvement in the organization. The results show that no significant difference is found between GenX and GenY. The reason could be that the brand of the organization equally attracts both GenX and GenY. Similar results have been reported in a study by Ferres, Travaglione and Firns (2003) in Australia. They found no significant difference in AC between older and younger generation people. Again, the current results for AC are comparable to the findings of McGuinnes (2000), which also did not show a difference in commitment between GenX group and GenY employees. Future studies may hopefully demonstrate that GenY employees display similar levels of AC to GenX colleagues.

From Tables 4 and 5, it is clear that GenY employees have a higher NC to organization than GenX employees. This means that GenY employees possess higher NC to their organizations as compared to GenX employees. This means that they want to remain in their organization because they are new to the organization and in the early stages of their career. In the same time, they are also trying to gain their expertise by attending company sponsor training and orientation programs. Therefore, GenY employees are used to demonstrate higher NC to the organization. On the other hand, GenX feels that their aspiration and career opportunities have already been fulfilled over their long tenure (15–20 years) in the organization. Hence, the psychological contract that is there in the case of GenX is over when they get older. Research on psychological contracts suggests that beliefs regarding reciprocal obligations are subject to change over (Schambach, 2001). Therefore, GenX employees, who may have received these benefits decades ago, may feel a lower sense of indebtedness to their organizations than GenY employees. Similar results have been reported by Upadhyaya (2013) in his study among Indian software professionals. He found salary difference is one of the strong factors cited for GenY employees’ NC towards the organization. However, in this research, training and career opportunity are found to be the main factors for the high NC among GenY employees. This difference may be due to the types of industries and the type of job profiles under study.

Table 5 shows that there is difference of CC between GenX and GenY employees. This means that there exists a significant difference of CC between GenX and GenY employees. Table 4 shows that GenX employees have a higher CC to organization than GenY employees. Therefore, GenX employees are more aware of the costs associated with leaving the organization. One of the reasons could be the essential difference in values and attitudes between the two groups under study. Other explanations can be their long association with the organization. For example, as tenure increases, the costs of leaving may also increase and it may involve the forfeiture/reduction of retirement benefits. The social and financial costs of relocating can also increase with time along with the social bonding with their communities. Changing professions and career path can be hard at the higher stage of life for GenX employees (Lee, Dougherty & Turban, 2000). The returns on investment (ROI) potential involved in this type of change are less for GenY employees as compared to GenX employees because of their age. Hence, they feel obliged to stay in the organization and hence have a higher CC to the organization. Bond, Thompson, Galinsky and Prottas (2003) found that older employees are less accepting the changes in work and family life than younger employees. Recently, similar results were also reported by Upadhyaya (2013) in his study.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to examine the generational differences and similarities among the employees of five ferro-alloy industries of Odisha, India in order to study the different level of commitment between GenX and GenY employees. Using the data collected from five ferro-alloy industries, generational similarities and differences of commitment were identified. Findings suggested that the GenX employees possess more NC than GenY employees, whereas GenY employees show more CC than GenX employees. The research found no difference in AC. Clearly, the current study is just one step towards a thorough understanding of generational differences and similarities in OC among employees of ferro-alloy industries. Identification of generational issues is likely to result in improvement of the commitment towards the organization and enhance employee morale and productivity by reducing generational conflicts in the workplace. Therefore, this study may help companies and managers to better understand generational issues in the workplace to improve OC. In addition, the results of the study will, hopefully, serve as a base for more comprehensive research in future.

Limitations and Suggestions

Limitations

Like any other study, this study is not free from limitations. Even though over 380 participants from five ferro-alloy industries participated in the study, findings of this study cannot be generalized beyond those regions because of the nature and design of the study. This further limits the generalizability of the findings. Future studies should be conducted on different types of industries preferably a national sample, to get a wider view of the obtained result.

Suggestions

Based on the findings of this study, the following suggestions can be useful to improve the commitment and work environment of the organization, where employees of different generations work under a common roof. (i) People of different age’s group bring different life experiences, styles of management, assumptions about dress, behaviour, etc. to the workplace. However, these differences should be seen as positive rather than negative by emphasizing on the positives of age diversity in teamwork. (ii) Flexible work options should be offered to GenX and GenY workers. One real difference between GenX workers and GenY workers is desired or preferred working hours. (iii) Facilitate continuous training opportunities to older workers, (iv) give room to grow, opportunity to make choices and scope for mentoring GenX employees and (v) create an environment for multitasking, relationship building, positive reinforcement and leadership to engage and motivate the younger employees.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is deeply grateful to the anonymous referees of the journal for their extremely useful suggestions to improve the quality of the article. Usual disclaimers apply.

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