Generationsdiskursen under angreb: Har den berettigelse på arbejdsmarkedet?

Abstract

Purpose - The term generations, has since the beginning of the century been a subject matter in regards to the new entering of generation Z, where many speculates about the impact this addition to the workforce will entail. Digging deeper under the surface, it becomes apparent that the generational discourse is not substantiated by theoretical research and thus has been merged from the sociocultural based on a hermeneutic understand of such. The purpose of this thesis thus became to examine the validity of the discourse and to find out what constitutes the underlying mechanism of generation Z.
Methodology –The thesis is employed in action research with a critical realism methodological philosophy, and have with that in mind conducted an online questionnaire as the thesis main empirical data. The survey were utilized in three ways: (1) to be compared with the characteristics of the generational discourse, and (2) to forth go a cluster analysis, with the primary purpose of being analyzed inductively to test whether the finding could show evidence of having a generational underlining. Finally (3) a factor analysis were provided to determine some of the underlying structures of the respondents.
Theory – The theoretical scope composes of three theories. Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis provides the fundamental knowledge of the development of discourses, where Giddens covers the social sciences perspective, Honneth’s acknowledgement theory is implied to understand the need of a subject.Findings–The thesis has after the conduction of the analysis, found strong evidence pointing towards a merging of generation Y and Z, and a falsification of the generational discourse in a professional context. Conclusion–The thesis concludes that the reason for the generational discourse regarding generation Z stems from an objectification of the current members in the work fields implicit want for change.