IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v34y2020i3p371-387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Management Millennialism: Designing the New Generation of Employee

Author

Listed:
  • Glynne Williams

Abstract

The idea that society can be divided into discrete generations, each with its own essential characteristics, is treated with caution in sociology, but has had considerable influence among human resource management writers and practitioners. ‘Millennials’ – today’s young adults – are said to bring unique attributes to the workplace that may fit uneasily with current management practice. Given the well-documented weakness of generational categories, both in analysis and practice, this article asks how the archetype of the Millennial has taken such a hold. By focusing on recruitment and training within a large company, the article argues that the idea of the Millennial has been validated by repetition and imitation, but that it also serves the more rational purpose of respecifying performance criteria. The Millennial has been constructed as a ‘challenge’, but specifically as a challenge to poor management.

Suggested Citation

  • Glynne Williams, 2020. "Management Millennialism: Designing the New Generation of Employee," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(3), pages 371-387, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:34:y:2020:i:3:p:371-387
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017019836891
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017019836891
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017019836891?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hélène Giroux, 2006. "‘It Was Such a Handy Term’: Management Fashions and Pragmatic Ambiguity," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(6), pages 1227-1260, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Morrell, 2008. "The Narrative of ‘Evidence Based’ Management: A Polemic," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 613-635, May.
    2. Sonia Adam-Ledunois & Sébastien Damart, 2016. "Innovation managériale… ou pas ? Design d'une méthodologie d'analyse critique des objets de management," Post-Print hal-01780623, HAL.
    3. Trentin, Alessio & Perin, Elisa & Forza, Cipriano, 2012. "Product configurator impact on product quality," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 850-859.
    4. Dag Øivind Madsen & Kåre Slåtten, 2015. "The Balanced Scorecard: Fashion or Virus?," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-35, June.
    5. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2016. "SWOT Analysis: A Management Fashion Perspective," Post-Print hal-01306102, HAL.
    6. Behrends, Thomas & Bauer, Maren, 2016. "Employer Branding: Kritische Würdigung eines personalwirtschaftlichen Gestaltungsansatzes," Flensburger Hefte zu Unternehmertum und Mittelstand 12, Jackstädt-Zentrum Flensburg.
    7. Itziar Castelló & Mette Morsing & Friederike Schultz, 2013. "Communicative Dynamics and the Polyphony of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Network Society," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(4), pages 683-694, December.
    8. Nelson, Andrew & Earle, Andrew & Howard-Grenville, Jennifer & Haack, Julie & Young, Doug, 2014. "Do innovation measures actually measure innovation? Obliteration, symbolic adoption, and other finicky challenges in tracking innovation diffusion," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 927-940.
    9. Joseph O'Mahoney, 2007. "The Diffusion of Management Innovations: The Possibilities and Limitations of Memetics," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(8), pages 1324-1348, December.
    10. Chahrazad Abdallah & Ann Langley, 2014. "The Double Edge of Ambiguity in Strategic Planning," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 235-264, March.
    11. Islam, Gazi, 2015. "A taste for otherness: Anthropophagy and the embodied self in organizations," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 351-361.
    12. McCaffrey Sara Jane & Kurland Nancy, 2014. "Who defines “local”? Resistance to harmonizing standards in ethical markets," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 191-219, April.
    13. Gideon D. Markman & Donald S. Siegel & Mike Wright, 2008. "Research and Technology Commercialization," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(8), pages 1401-1423, December.
    14. McKinlay, Alan & Pezet, Eric, 2018. "Foucault, governmentality, strategy: From the ear of the sovereign to the multitude," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 57-68.
    15. Sebastian D. Becker & Martin Messner & Utz Schäffer, 2020. "The Interplay of Core and Peripheral Actors in the Trajectory of an Accounting Innovation: Insights from beyond Budgeting," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 2224-2256, December.
    16. Anouck Adrot & Jean-Luc Moriceau, 2013. "Introducing performativity to crisis management theory : an illustration from the 2003 French heat wave crisis response," Post-Print hal-01451075, HAL.
    17. Mikael Brännmark & Jostein Langstrand & Stina Johansson & Agneta Halvarsson & Lena Abrahamsson & Jörgen Winkel, 2012. "Researching Lean: Methodological Implications of Loose Definitions," Quality Innovation Prosperity, Technical University of Košice, Department of integrated management, vol. 16(2).
    18. Viviane Sergi & Maria Lusiani & Ann Langley & Jean-Louis Denis, 2013. "Saying what you do and doing what you say: The performative dynamics of lean management theory," Working Papers 35, Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    19. Sébastien Damart & Albert David & Milena Klasing Chen & Dominique Laousse, 2018. "Turning managers into management designers : an experiment," Post-Print hal-01921127, HAL.
    20. E. Geoffrey Love & Peter Cebon, 2008. "Meanings on Multiple Levels: The Influence of Field‐Level and Organizational‐Level Meaning Systems on Diffusion," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 239-267, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:34:y:2020:i:3:p:371-387. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.