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Smartphones play an integral part in many children's lives. Their constant presence in various contexts and the multitude of affordances they present have a tremendous effect on how childhoods are lived today. One important aspect is the way children's interaction with smartphones can affect relationships and particularly generational relations. In this explorative study, we investigated Azerbaijani children's interaction with smartphones in the family and at school using the sociomaterial and relational approaches. Thinking relationally, we followed children's stories to unravel how smartphones can mediate different types of behavior and assist children in negotiating their place in generational order with the adults in their lives. Analyses suggest that smartphones can both present children with bargaining power to negotiate pleasure and fun as well as means to reinforce the generational order by children themselves. The findings point out that children often transfer social norms and expectations placed on them to the ways they use smartphones.

Childhood sociology as it has evolved from explicit critique of socialization sciences has developed two central concepts: “The child as (competent) actor” and the notion of “generational order.” It is above all the second concept that has not yet been fully dealt with within its sociological context. The term “generational order” is not just supposed to refer to ordered relations between (socially defined) age groups and their members, but also to a social order in general, as it is achieved by the ordered arrangement of age groups. From a historical perspective one can see that those efforts that aim at a disciplined society with small social control expenses do at the latest from the 19th century onwards concentrate on education and a well organized family and thus on a well ordered arrangement of age groups. It is an ordering process towards self-control, towards self-government as the most dense as well as discrete way of government. Until just some years ago such development appeared as an indispensable prerequisite of social order to those sociologists dealing with questions of childhood and growing up – at least as long as they assumed the perspective of socialization theory and sciences. Only the absence or deficiency of such a generational order had any chance to become an important scientific question.

Interest in generational research has garnered a lot of attention, as the workplace is seeing multiple generations (i.e., the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials) working side-by-side for the first time. However, it is unclear how multiple generations of workers interact with each other and affect the workplace. Although there is extant literature on generational differences, some scholars have argued that the effect sizes are small and the differences are not meaningful. The focal aim of this chapter is to present the current state of literature on generational research. We present the relevant conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks that establish generational research. We then review evidence from existing research studies to establish the areas of differences that may exist among the different generations. In our review, we identify the issues arising from generational differences that are relevant to human resource management (HRM) practices, including new workforce entrants, aging workers, the changing nature of work and organizations, and leadership development. We conclude with several directions for future research on modernizing workplace policies and practices, ensuring sustainability in current employment models, facilitating future empirical research, and integrating the effects of globalization in generational research.

Although the relation between individual and collective memory has been long established, analysis of individual memories is hardly existent within the social sciences outside of psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Working to overcome this gap, the author argues that children’s lives are heavily influenced by the structures of collective memory they are born into, available to children through the complex system of inter- and intragenerational relationships from very early on.

Drawing on the concepts of generation (Karl Mannheim), generagency (Madelaine Leonard), and collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs), the author establishes that the practise of intergeneratonal exchange of memories within the family provides a way to influence and overcome the limiting of children’s agency by social stratification determined by age.

In this chapter, rephrasing Spivak's question into ‘can subaltern children speak?’, I reorient the research on China's gigantic population of children and youths in rural migrant families towards a critical interpretative approach. Based on life history and longitudinal ethnographic interview gathered with three cases, I unpack the multiple meanings migrants' children attach to mobility in their childhood experiences. First, despite emotional difficulties, children see their parents' out-migration more as a ‘mobility imperative’ than their abandonment of parental responsibilities, which should be contextualized in China's long-term urban-biased social policies and the resultant development gaps in rural and urban societies. Second, the seemingly ‘unstable’ and ‘flexible’ mobility patterns observed in migrant families should be understood in relation to a long-term family social mobility strategy to promote children's educational achievement and future attainment. The combination of absent class politics in an illiberal society with an enduring ideology of education-based meritocracy in Confucianism makes this strategy a culturally legitimate channel of social struggle for recognition and respect for the subaltern. Last, children in migrant families are active contributors to their families' everyday organization amidst mobilities through sharing care and household responsibilities, and developing temporal and mobility strategies to keep alive intergenerational exchanges and family togetherness. The study uncovers coexisting resilience and vulnerabilities of migrants' children in their ‘doing class’ in contemporary China. It also contributes insights into our understanding of the diversity of childhoods in Asian societies at the intersection of familyhood, class dynamics and cultural politics.

Facilities management centers on the triad of people, process, and place, but the element of people is incomplete without recognition and consideration of the different generations that make up today's workforce and the differences between these groups. The purpose of this article is to suggest that facilities managers should take advantage of available current information on generational differences, in order to maximize their ability to manage people and knowledge.

This article presents pertinent findings from a recent pilot study that surveyed 55 facilities management professionals from the mid‐Western USA, presents a brief overview of current knowledge relating to generational differences, and highlights the relevance of such knowledge to effective facilities management.

Almost one quarter of the respondents to the pilot study did not agree that knowledge of generational differences was important, while about half of the respondents only somewhat agreed that it was important. However, a survey of relevant literature suggests that successful management of generational differences in the workplace has the potential to improve the efficiency and viability of an enterprise, including facilitating knowledge management.

The current study is limited by its small sample size. Additional research is needed to further examine the value facilities managers place on generational knowledge and the relationship between facilities management and knowledge management.

The current paucity of information regarding the relationship between generational differences, facilities management, and knowledge management makes studies like this one relevant and valuable to facilities managers operating in a workplace with unprecedented generational diversity and an increasingly knowledge‐driven economy.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the nature of job characteristics related to different generational cohorts (Baby-boomers, Generation X and Generation Y). Significant differences between four task and four social job characteristics across generational cohorts have been revealed.

The empirical research was conducted through a field study of employees from large-sized Croatian organizations. A cross-sectional and cross-occupational research design was applied. A total of 512 knowledge workers (139 managers and 373 professionals) participated in the research. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to determine and compare work design across generations.

The results indicate that job characteristics are not equally represented within different generational cohorts. While the nature of task job characteristics is mostly irrespective of generations, social job characteristics to some extent differ among generational cohorts. High task variety, reasonably high task identity, and a moderate level of both received interdependence and task significance are recognized as common job characteristics of knowledge workers across generations. However, jobs of Baby-boomers, Xers, and Yers are idiosyncratic for work autonomy, interaction with others, initiated interdependence, and teamwork. Additionally, the inclusion of the work type as a control variable revealed that interaction with others does differ but only among generations of professionals.

The present study is the first research in which generational similarities and differences have been empirically examined through job characteristics. The authors focused on knowledge workers within an under-researched context (studies about knowledge workers, work design and generational differences are rare or non-existent in south-eastern European countries), making this systematic investigation unique and practically significant.

Although there has been much psychological research about children's sibling relations, it has been a neglected area of study in sociology (exceptions are Brannen et al., 2000; Kosonen, 1996; Mauthner, 2002). This paper, based on empirical research on siblings in Scotland, explores the nature of the generational power structure within families from children's perspectives. Childhood is a relational concept which forms part of the generational order. Alanen explains this as “a complex set of social processes through which people become (are constructed as) ‘children’ while other people become (are constructed as) ‘adults’” (2001, pp. 20, 21). Generational processes shape the nature of child-parent relations (Mayall, 2002). Alanen states that:one position (such as the parental position) cannot exist without the other (child) position; also what parenting is – that is, action in the position of a parent – is dependent on its relation to the action “performed” in the child position, and a change in one part is tied to change in the other (Alanen, 2001, p. 19).In other words, child-parent relations are based on the understanding that childhood is relational with parenthood (see also Mayall, 2002). Alanen (2001) argues that the social construction of childhood and adulthood involves a process, including the agency of both children and adults, which she refers to as a set of “practices”:It is through such practices that the two generational categories of children and adults are recurrently produced and therefore they stand in relations of connection and interaction, of interdependence (Alanen, 2001, p. 21).These practices of generationing may be “childing” practices through which people are constructed as children or “adulting” practices through which a distinct adult position is produced. The ways in which children in the present study talked about the differences between their relationships with their parents and their siblings indicated that there are a range of generationing practices that take place within families. They referred to particular kinds of behaviour that were acceptable to engage in with other children (in this case with their siblings) but not with their parents. Overwhelmingly the key issue which children highlighted as distinct between their relations with parents and siblings was the differential nature of power in these relationships. Whilst it is not surprising that children perceive the distribution of power to be more unequal between children and parents than between siblings, the aim of this paper is to explore the nature of this power and how it is experienced from children's point of view. In particular the paper discusses the ways in which children perceive child-parent relations compared with their sibling relationships in relation to the giving and receiving of power within the home.

Achieving intergenerational interaction and avoiding conflict is becoming increasingly difficult in a workplace populated by three generations – Baby Boomers, Generation X‐ers and Generation Y‐ers. This paper presents a model and proposes HR solutions towards achieving co‐operative generational interaction.

This paper adapts Park's theory of race relations to explain the distinctiveness of generational work groups and the challenges and opportunities that these groups present when interacting in organisations. Rashford and Coghlan's cycle of organisational change, based on the Kübler‐Ross grief cycle, is then mapped onto Park's race relations cycle in order to link generational interaction to emotional reactions to change over time.

The paper sets out a research agenda for examining how generations interact in the workplace. It acknowledges the limitations of using Park's theory of race relations, in particular the criticisms levelled at assimilationist approaches.

The paper provides an alternative viewpoint for examining how generations co‐exist and interact and shows how HR solutions can respond to the needs of different generations.

Based on generational theory, this research studies the preferences of French young graduates from Generation Y for job and organizational attributes of a future employer. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the inter- vs intragenerational differences and discusses the common stereotype of an intragroup homogeneity within the Generation Y.

Reviewing generation and job search literature, the paper update graduates’ preferences for job and organizational attributes in their initial job search by using conjoint analysis, a rarely used methodology in human resource management (HRM). To test the intragroup homogeneity and to overcome methodological difficulties inherent in examining differences within a generational cohort, the paper operationalized a homogeneous sample (n=592) composed of people of the same age, career stage, cohort and nationality.

The authors demonstrate that, even if on the whole young graduates from Generation Y prefer job security and a relaxed work atmosphere, their preferences are heterogeneous.

This research leads to discuss the relevance of the concept of Generation Y for recruitment. Additional research is needed to improve the external validity of this study which must be reproduced in other contexts and with different populations.

The results provide useful information to assist HR managers and recruitment specialists in improving the efficiency of the recruitment process and in considering the relevant segmentation criteria for recruitment.

Using an original methodology, conjoint analysis, this paper focusses on the heterogeneity of Generation Y and its consequences in terms of HRM.