Management and Organisation Research Community – Professor Dan Woodman

Title: Thinking Differently about Generational Differences at Work, in Careers and in Lifestyles: What Role for the Sociology of Generations?

Date: 5 February 2024

Time: 15:00-16:30

Location: NUBS.2.12

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Thinking Differently about Generational Differences at Work, in Careers and in Lifestyles: What Role for the Sociology of Generations?

Speaker: Professor Dan Woodman, University of Melbourne

Dan Woodman is the TR Ashworth Professor in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. He is immediate past President of Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia, was a two-term President of The Australian Sociological Association and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. Dan is co-Chief Investigator on the Life Patterns project, one of the largest and longest running studies of young lives, tracking three generations of young Australians from the end of secondary school into adulthood. He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Youth Studies and has written widely on young people’s lives and the sociology of generations (including Youth and Generation, with Johanna Wyn).

Abstract:

Generations is one of the categories commonly used to understand different approaches to employment, entrepreneurialism and career, as well as different political attitudes and lifestyle choices. Others claim generational categorisations flatten diversity and that a focus on generations obscures continuities between generations, particularly related to socio-economic and other forms of social inequality. This presentation will outline the emergence of a sociological approach to thinking about generational differences and how it has developed over time, highlighting how age, period and cohort effects interact to shape people’s lives. It will draw on empirical examples from a 30-year and ongoing mixed-methods longitudinal study of three cohorts of young people Australians, tracked from when they finish secondary school through their 20s and 30s, focusing on the shifting interaction of career plans and values, income, assets and family support that is reshaping young lives at work and beyond. The presentation will show how intergenerational differences can be identified but also these differences do not lead to a clash of generations.