Generational change in the workforce: emerging behavioural traits of millennials in teams and organizations

Abstract

Organizations are affected by a continuous generational change in their workforce. Members of the Millennials generations started to supplant previous generations. As per any generational change the incumbent generation is supposed to bring to the workplace peculiar traits and habits which might differ from that of the previous generation, due to the differences in significant life events that the two generations crossed. Millennials are portrayed as digital natives, i.e. individuals deeply immersed in information and communication technologies, used to intensively interact with them for a wide gamut of purposes, and dependent on them so much that when they are taken away from their devices they start to feel a sense of lack and inadequateness. The literature has studied digital natives mainly from the perspective of teaching and education. Few woks focused instead on the collaboration consequences raised by the presence of these individuals in the workforce. This paper is part of a larger research project devoted to study if the intense interaction that digital natives had with information and communications technologies produced consequences in their behaviour in professional contexts. The paper discusses the results of an exploratory study to investigate differences in behavioural traits among digital natives, and to see if the traits that are purportedly associated with the profile of a digital native produce differences on the way individuals cooperate with peers in teams and organizations.