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This paper addresses the perceived closeness of the relation between East and West German adult children and their parents who no longer live in the same household. The empirical analyses are based on the German Socio‐Economic Panel (GSOEP). They show that East German family relations are closer than West German relations. Regarding the causes for closer or weaker relations for East and West Germans there are both similarities and differences. For example, the empirical analyses indicate differences regarding the importance of standard of living, birth cohort, and religion.

The paper aims to explore the intergenerational maps project that set out to map the Brimbank and Moonee Valley residents' awareness of their favourite aspects of their local community. In reflecting on the way this project enabled local knowledge exchanges between different age groups, the paper examines the way intergenerational interactions become pedagogical and make public and public pedagogy visible.

This research paper employs the theoretical and methodological framework of performance (Charman and Dixon, 2021) to read the author's experience with the intergenerational maps project. Insights gained from performance framework are shared to illuminate the complexity of public pedagogy and its entanglement with place, public and knowledge.

The critical reflection on the author's encounter with a pedagogical event points to the importance of using a new theorisation of public pedagogy (Charman and Dixon, 2021) as a useful generative method to guide the reading, learning and research within the fields of public pedagogy and intergenerational relations.

The practical implications of this paper centres on its deployment of a new theorisation of public pedagogy as a useful framework for studying intergenerational interactions. This places these intergenerational interactional dynamics in the field of public pedagogy and can be practically applied to further develop desirable public pedagogical practices within the arena of public pedagogy.

The paper offers a subjective interpretation of the author's experience with an intergenerational interaction project and presents an application of a theoretical framework to read events as pedagogical performances that brings insights into the pedagogical potential of these public performances.

The literature on identity and identification can enrich our understanding of intergenerational behavior in organizations and society. In this chapter, I outline factors that lead the present generation to categorize future generations as part of their in-group, and circumstances under which people feel that it is consistent with their identity or self-concept to act on the behalf of future generations. Intergenerational identification is defined as the perception of “oneness” among generations such that multiple (two or more) generations consider themselves as part of a single group. I posit that intergenerational cooperation is more likely to occur when intergenerational identification is high. Finally, I elucidate the relationships among intergenerational identification, organizational identification, and intergenerational cooperation.

Although ambivalence is a common experience in family relations, the conceptualization of these relations has been focused on solidarity, closeness, and attraction on one hand, and on stress, distance, disruption, and abuse on the other. Ambivalence has not often been considered systematically for the analysis of intergenerational relations. Measurement instruments are not widely available for this purpose, because they tend to focus on one dimension at a time (Berscheid, 1983, pp. 115–116).

There is a long history of interest in the concept of ambivalence, as the contributions to the present volume show. It is therefore somewhat remarkable that until very recently, ambivalence has not been explicitly employed in research on intergenerational relations in later life. Given the popular acceptance of contradictory feelings about parents (Cohler, 1983) and the frequent portrayal of such contradictions in cultural products (Reinharz, 1986), this may be a major gap in research. However, the question remains: Is some degree of ambivalence in fact characteristic of parent-child relationships in later life? If so, do participants in these relationships identify ambivalence when it occurs? Further, is intergenerational ambivalence related to other variables of interest? This chapter presents results from a study that addressed the issue of ambivalence in older parent-adult child relations. Measures of intergenerational ambivalence were developed and employed in a sample of 189 older women.

This chapter is not about the development of the child; I am making this clear from the outset because the title could easily be misinterpreted that way by the readers who are unacquainted with social studies of childhood. Although ‘development’ and ‘child’ are familiar concepts, which combined in notions of ‘development of the child’ or ‘child development’ are parts of a century long, successful and dominant discourse, the notion of ‘development of childhood’ is rather begging questions, such as if there at all is such a thing as a theory of childhood development and if we need it. To my mind the brief answer to the first question is ‘no’, but quite a few authors have made thoughtful formulations about it and about generational relations without necessarily having intended to be theory builders (cf. Alanen, 2009). The answer to the second question is ‘yes’, I believe we need such a theory to come to terms with how children's life worlds have changed and how they have related to contemporaries belonging to other generations – adulthood, youth and old age.

Understood as the simultaneous experience of necessarily conflicting attitudes, wishes, feelings, or intentions, the concept of ambivalence has a complex history in psychological and social analysis. Lüscher (2000) reviewed the history of this concept, initially used in the study of abnormal states, and then generalized to the realm of the usual and expectable in social life. It should be noted at the outset that the term “ambivalence” presents two problems for social analysis: adoption of a term initially intended to portray abnormal states for the expectable course of adult life, and the extension of a concept founded on the study of personal states to social analysis. Consistent with Bleuler’s (Riklin, 1910/1911) initial discussion of the term ambivalence,¹ Freud (1909, 1912, 1912–1913, 1914) attempted to resolve the first problem by showing that ambivalence – as the experience of mixed and conflicting sentiments regarding those who are particularly important in one’s own life – inevitably emerges out of the child’s effort to resolve the tension between social reality and his or her own desire focused on the parents of early childhood. At the same time, Freud compounded the second problem by regarding the realm of the social as the personal writ large.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the systematic analysis of an innovative, intergenerational knowledge transfer strategy in a knowledge‐intensive organization.

The case study method was adopted to study the intergenerational knowledge transfer activities. A triangulated approach was employed in respect of the data collection, which included non‐participatory observation, focus groups, documentary analysis, and semi‐structured interviews. A pattern analysis of data account was undertaken.

Two models for intergenerational knowledge transfer are presented: the source‐recipient model and the model of mutual exchange. This research also shows how a context conducive to knowledge transfer was developed, and concludes that this context allowed both explicit and tacit knowledge to be transferred.

Often ignored or underestimated this study highlights the need for motivation, inspiration, and empowerment in knowledge transfer. The main limitation of this study is the generalizability of the findings.

The two models for intergenerational knowledge transfer provide a rubric against which both old and new intergenerational knowledge transfer initiatives can be assessed to determine whether they are capable of encouraging the transfer of both explicit and tacit knowledge.

There is little empirical work on the design and implementation of strategies for managing organizational memory. The integrated models and empirical results of this study can serve as guides in that process.