Search results

Meetings are conducted by increasingly age-diverse participant groups as the workforces in most industrialized economies are aging due to demographic change. There are at least three reasons why meetings constitute a particularly interesting environment to study intergenerational learning processes, defined as individuals’ joint construction of knowledge through an exchange of information with one or more individuals from different age groups. First, meetings allow us to observe a wide variety of interactions that may foster or inhibit intergenerational learning. Second, the interactions taking place in meetings reflect general organizational practices as well as social exchange and age norms. As such, meetings offer a view through the magnifying glass at the age-inclusive or age-discriminating organizational culture which is interwoven with the engagement of different generations in intergenerational learning processes. Third, organizational members use meetings as an arena for strategic interactions to negotiate their current and future status by positioning themselves in relation to their colleagues through social comparisons. This chapter particularly focuses on the latter topic and develops a conceptual model outlining the motivational and emotional coˇnsequences as well as antecedents that link social comparison processes in meetings to intergenerational learning outcomes of participants from different age groups.

Important demographic changes are causing organizations and teams to become increasingly age-diverse. Because knowledge sharing is critical to organizations’ long-term sustainability and success, both researchers and practitioners face a strategic dilemma: namely, finding ways to cultivate greater knowledge sharing among different age cohorts.

In this chapter, we claim that age diversity adds relevant opportunities and distinct challenges. On one hand, it increases demands for effective knowledge sharing: Employees of different ages are likely to hold diverse knowledge and capabilities that may be lost and/or poorly exploited if they are not effectively shared. On the other hand, age differences can activate age-related stereotypes and foster the formation of age subgroups, which can hamper social integration, communication, and ultimately, knowledge sharing.

Building on these insights, this chapter looks at the role of the human resource management (HRM) system as a key facilitator of effective knowledge sharing in age-diverse organizations. To this end, the chapter focuses on HR planning, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward systems, each of which can be used to develop the motivations, norms, and accountability structures that encourage employees of different ages to bridge their differences and integrate their unique perspectives and knowledge. This chapter suggests ways of tailoring HRM practices to unlock the benefits of age diversity, which may help organizations exploit and capitalize on the knowledge-based resources held by their younger and older employees.

Learning and development occur in many spaces both within and outside formal education settings. This chapter explores progress and possibilities of a knowledge exchange programme with a third sector organisation involved with community development, playwork and youth work in an urban area of the East Midlands. Theoretical concepts draw on a growing international interest in intergenerational play (Graves, 2002) and ‘cultural circles’ (Gill, 2020) as a method of challenging power and communication barriers between practitioners and families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Using Foucault, post-structuralist feminism and autoethnography, as well as insight from a knowledge exchange partnership – the chapter offers a critique of a national initiative aimed at addressing ‘holiday hunger’ and community engagement. Practitioners in international contexts may benefit from the chapter’s attempt to address a series of co-constructed questions that include:

1. How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

2. What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

3. How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

In the years 2016–2019, in collaboration with primary school students from Wrocław, Poland, the authors endeavoured to implement participatory methods in children’s literature studies. Their collaborations with these children resulted in the formation of an intergenerational research team and the publication of two peer-reviewed articles co-written with child researchers. As their thinking about child-led research has gravitated towards approaches accentuating the value of co-thinking, they have grown convinced of the potential of participatory research to counterbalance the adultism prevailing in children’s literature studies. Building on the authors’ two participatory projects: ‘Children’s Voices in the Polish Canon Wars: Participatory Research in Action’ (Chawar et al., 2018) and ‘Productive Remembering of Polish Childhoods: Child–Adult Memory-Work with the School Literary Canon’ (Deszcz-Tryhubczak et al., 2019), this chapter offers a meta-critical reflection on the practical and ethical challenges of working on a research paper co-authored by young collaborators. They focus on issues linked to child–adult co-authorship, such as anonymity concerns, the ethics of representations, time pressures, and institutional challenges. They propose that the key to reassessing the status of child-led research in academia lies in accepting the ‘messiness’ of participatory research, treating it as a constant work in progress rather than a final outcome or product, and shifting away from the more rigid format of academic writing towards a collectivistic and free-flowing narrative.

Intergenerational appreciative inquiry is an approach that maximizes the generativity of all generations and the generative outcomes of intergenerational collaboration. While conversations about intergenerationalism have increased in recent decades, forums and strategies for intergenerational collaboration have emerged at a much slower rate. In this chapter we explore definitions of the concepts of intergenerational and multigenerational and discuss generativity in the context of intergenerationalism. We share how we have found the appreciative inquiry summit, and other appreciative-based processes, to possess a natural capacity for enabling intergenerational inquiry that can maximize generativity. We conclude by turning to the future and discussing generational changes that are taking place in society and why we expect intergenerational appreciative inquiry will only increase in importance as we continue caring for the future together.

The purpose of our chapter is to contribute to the current literature on sport and the environment by introducing an ethic of sustainability embedded in the historical and ongoing place-based physical cultures of Fisher River Cree Nation (Ochékwi Sipi).

Using an Indigenous-centered, community-based research design, we conducted four sharing circles with a total of 13 Elders from Fisher River Cree Nation. Sharing circles are a culturally safe discussion format for Elders to share their experiences and perspectives, which is significant in that Elders serve as critical links in the intergenerational communication of Cree place-based knowledge.

The key finding of this research is presented, centering around the more-than-human ethic that emerges from the place-specific stories of movement and physical culture shared by the Elders.

Based on the stories of the Elders we show how intimate and deeply embodied knowledges are formed over the course of generations of living with, learning from, and moving across Land. The knowledge gathered from this research presents an alternative to the dominant Western worldview and may serve as a critical link in struggles for environmental and social sustainability.