Johnson, Jasmine McGinnis, Piatak, Jaclyn Schede, and Ng, Eddy (2017) Managing generational differences in nonprofit organizations. In: Word, Jessica K.A., and Sowa, Jessica E., (eds.) The Nonprofit Human Resource Management Handbook: from theory to practice. Routledge, New York, NY, USA, pp. 304-322.

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Abstract

Ensuring employees are satisfied with their jobs, committed, and engaged to the organizations for which they work are some of the most salient issues facing managers today. Despite a large amount of research describing the importance of managing all employees with strategic human resource practices, there have been increasing concerns about managing employees across all generations. For example, a number of popular press articles (Alsop, 2008; Lancaster & Stillman, 2009) bemoan the difficulty managers will likely face managing Millennials (individuals born between 1980 and 1995) who have different work values than previous generations, technology preferences, and ideas about work-life balance that are divergent from Baby Boomers (individuals born between 1946 and 1964) and Generation X’ers (individuals born between 1965 and 1979). Yet, many managers continue to grapple with how best to manage employees of all generational groups and many lack knowledge about whether or not learning about generations makes any difference in the workplace. Additionally, very little research on managing across generations is being conducted specific to the nonprofit sector (exceptions include Kunreuther, Kim, & Rodriguez, 2008; McGinnis, 2011; McGinnis Johnson & Ng, 2016; Ng & McGinnis Johnson 2015), and nonprofit managers may believe research on generations does not apply to them because nonprofit employees are inherently different from employees in other sectors.

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