Review Essay - Generational Differences and other Marketing Myths

Abstract

The author argues that the hype surrounding the supposedly unique characteristics and workplace demands of ‘Generation Y’ deserves closer critical analysis. He questions those within the Army and the Australian Defence Force who use the simplifications of ‘generationalism’ as the basis for making long-term strategic workforce management decisions. He concludes by outlining five common workforce needs that might be expressed differently in each generation but which remain at the foundation of military workforce management and development.

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Social analysis and commentary has many shortcomings, but few of its chapters are as persistently wrong-headed as those of the generations and generational change. This literature abounds with hyperbole and unsubstantiated leaps from the available data.

- Everett Carll Ladd, Political Scientist¹

About this Paper

This paper began life as an appraisal of the Spring 2006 Griffith Review titled ‘The Next Big Thing’, which presents a range of views on ‘generationalism’ in the form of essays, reflections, stories and poetry. Generationalism is the term used to describe patterns of behaviour on the basis ‘of the block of fifteen to twenty years in which you were born’.² In particular, I was attracted to Creed O’Hanlon’s observation that the Baby Boomers ‘were never big on originality’. He asserts that much of the foundation for the substantial social and technological change of the 1960’s and 1970’s—including the Internet—was laid by members of the ‘Silent Generation’.³ For me, this simple insight exposes the hyperbole that has become part of the national discourse about generational differences. The Army and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is entering a period when the resources will be available to implement long-standing recruiting and retention initiatives. This will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make fundamental structural changes to strategic human resource management in the Services. This is not a time for our leaders to become captive of marketing fads and fleeting social effects.

After reading the Griffith Review, I chose to review the subject of generationalism rather than persist with an evaluation of the most recent publication on the subject. I felt that a better understanding of the topic was more important than a review of the latest literature. Consequently, this essay contains my views and reflections on generational differences and the implications for the management and development of the military workforce. My aim is to stimulate critical thinking, conversation and informed debate about workforce management and development in the Army and the Australian Defence Force (ADF). As I leave the Army, this essay is a mix of observations, contemplations and growing concerns about our fascination with generationalism as a justification for strategic workforce management practices. I have taken the personal approach to examining the topic because the area seems to rely heavily on the speculation and opinion of self-styled ‘experts’. I’m adopting the same approach but I hope to be a voice for balance, caution and true strategic change.

Pragmatism and Caution

I am often drawn to Bruce Grant’s observation that Australians and Australian society are ‘not especially profound or thoughtful, but marked by applied energy, at its best coupled with intelligence and ingenuity’.⁴

The socialisation, training and education provided to the ADF sharpens Grant’s national characteristic to a fine edge. The outcome, I think, is that the key intellectual strength of the ADF is the ability to mobilise, coordinate, refine and repackage the mass of existing military knowledge. Our history shows that we have responded well to the challenges that have confronted the institution. However, in these more uncertain times, when Australian society and the global strategic environment seem to be in flux, the ADF’s leaders are confronting complex social problems to which there are no readily available solutions. Nor does the existing body of knowledge seem complete. Indeed, finding a way to understand the dimensions of the problem can prove to be as difficult as identifying an appropriate solution.

For sound institutional reasons, the ADF workforce’s pragmatic approach often means that the institution appears resistant to ‘new’ ideas that threaten established practice. The military is suspicious of scholars, intellectuals and fringe groups advocating new methods and ideas. In particular, the workforce is apprehensive about those who advocate for change from the inside. For me, the surprising feature of the ADF’s pragmatic intellectual tradition is that our ostensibly innate scepticism about anything ‘new’ does not extend to ideas advocated by supposed experts from the business community. With naive enthusiasm, we seem all too ready to ‘surf’ the latest business fad. This is not an altogether bad trait. However, in our enthusiasm we also suspend critical judgement and adopt a demeanour of wide-eyed and innocent acceptance that seems incompatible with our usual behaviour.

After close observation, I believe that the ADF’s repeatedly artless approach to the offerings of self-styled business experts is a symptom of an over-developed sense of pragmatism. This is in keeping with the broader adage that our most positive characteristic taken to extreme is our greatest weakness. The ADF workforce, and its leadership, is comfortable with ‘doing things’—a ‘can-do’ attitude is prized above all else. However, the cultural cost is that we no longer trust ourselves to think deeply about the complex problems our institution faces. The US Army’s Colonel Lloyd Matthews made a similar observation of the US Services: ‘In thus hiring outsiders to do its thinking, the services risk selling their intellectual souls to the devil of deprofessionalisation.’⁵ We seem to have lost some professional confidence in our capacity to think clearly about leadership and management. We need to be reminded that many of today’s leadership, management and organisational design truisms—that are presented to us as startling revelations from the business community—originated from military studies of military organisations adapting to the conditions of war. I wonder whether, subtly and over time, we have not progressively outsourced to academics and business schools our professional responsibility to think deeply about these matters.

I believe our cultural weakness is most apparent in the management and development of the ADF workforce. Workforce change is the most complex and intractable problem facing the ADF as it struggles to transform into the network-enabled force of 2020. Workforce management and development is the pivot point where complex problems, business ‘experts’ and the ADF leadership’s desire for ‘can-do’ action all converge. The result is a potent mix of ‘paralysis by analysis’ and ‘fad surfing’. Conservatively, I estimate that the government, the Audit Office, the Department and the Services have conducted at least twelve major studies of the ‘personnel function’ since the Glenn Review in 1995.⁶ Many have covered the same ground and made similar recommendations. Indeed, in my view, labelling an ADF activity ‘The Human Dimension of...’ ensures that a review will be conducted, ‘experts’ will be engaged, and the institution will be subjected to a raft of ‘just so’ stories.⁷ ‘Just so’ stories refer to unnecessarily elaborate and speculative explanations for phenomena that are widely accepted as fact despite the lack of empirical evidence to support their contention.

A persistent ‘just so’ story of recent times is the supposed attitudinal and behavioural differences between generations. In 2000, I published a paper in the Australian Defence Force Journal that speculated on the implications of demographic and generational trends in the Army workforce.⁸ The last time I wrote on generational issues I began the article with the same quote from political scientist Everett Carll Ladd that opens this paper. I hoped that it would sound an appropriate note of caution about the type of speculative analysis in which I was engaging. I still believe that Ladd’s observation should be re-stated prior to launching into any discussion on generational differences.

As the interest in generational trends in Australian society and the ADF has continued unabated with little criticism in the intervening years, I feel that a renewed voice of caution is required. Indeed, my main concern about this debate, both within the military and the broader community, is that criticism or alternative explanations are rarely voiced. Since I last wrote on this topic, the focus has shifted from how to accommodate the supposed needs of ‘Generation X’ to the optimising of the organisation to match the growing workplace demands of ‘Generation Y’.⁹ I still feel that we need to be mindful that, institutionally, we are not drawn into developing workforce management strategies based on speculative generational trends for which the evidence remains at best sketchy. Indeed, I believe that the quality of research in this area has declined markedly, while the hyperbole of generational differences has escalated dramatically.¹⁰ If there was ever a time for the ADF leadership to critically interrogate the information it receives on these issues, it is now.

Marketing Fad or Body of Knowledge

Much of the heat and noise about generational differences is fed by marketers who have an interest in putting themselves forward as experts on the attitudes and behaviour of a particular generational group or groups. These experts have an interest in positioning themselves to offer professional services that seek to build the capacity of business to sell a product to a particular market segment. In the case of the ADF, we are ‘selling’ the benefits of a military career and lifestyle in a competitive labour marketplace. For me, there is considerable doubt about whether the research and analysis conducted to support generational differences is independent or objective. So, our responsibility is to question the motivation of the researcher, critically examine the findings of each study, and remain alert to techniques that arrange subjective speculation to appear as if it were an immutable and generalised fact.

Today, marketing focuses on understanding the consumer population in order to identify segments whose behaviour can be influenced to create demand for a product. For example, Defence Force Recruiting spends considerable time and effort understanding the ADF’s target market and develops advertising campaigns to create demand for an ADF career. The ADF recruiting campaign is based on specific research into the attitudes of an age-defined population against a specific product—an ADF career. Within the personnel function, both recruiting and retention are tactical activities that require specific market intelligence to be effective. My concern is not with the tactical methods adopted in the process of recruiting. I am concerned when sweeping statements are made about particular ‘generational’ groups that are generalised beyond the context within which the research was conducted. For example, recent research makes the following statements:¹¹

• ‘42 per cent [of Generation Y] placed “relationship with peers” as one of the top three reasons for getting or keeping their job’, or how about:
   
• ‘90 per cent [of Generation Y] would stay longer in their job given the right training and development.’

So what? When did it become ‘news’ that people find jobs through friends, that people like working with people whose company they enjoy and whose professional skills they respect? When did this become a burning question that required generational research? Do we truly believe that this has been different for any generation at this age (12–26 years)? Was there a time when people disdained professional development?

This type of research finding does not answer the profound generational questions of our time, nor does it provide leaders with ‘new’ information that might be used to improve recruitment practices or workplace productivity. These are well-known workforce management axioms that have been repackaged to appear ‘new’. Again, we need to be more critical of the research conducted into ‘generational differences’ and the motives of those who package and sell the information.

It is interesting to note that in 2003 a respected research organisation, the Center for Creative Leadership, conducted a study that sought to help leaders to understand the similarities and differences between generational groups in the workplace. The study compared groups across market segments in the workplace, including the Silent Generation (born 1925–45), Early (Baby) Boomers (born 1946–54), Late (Baby) Boomers (born 1955–63), Early (Generation) Xers (born 1964–76), and Late (Generation) Xers (born 1977–82). They found few substantive differences in attitude, aspiration or behaviour. These researchers recommended that business leaders consider generational differences ‘very, very carefully, and without relying on stereotypes’.¹²

Marketers seek to generate seductive myths about the products they are trying to sell. These myths, often dressed in the robes of objective social research, are used to actively shape the context of business operations. Despite what they might have us believe, marketers are not just intermediaries between the consumer and product, merely reconciling the two in the marketplace. Generational marketers are deliberately attempting to shape the marketplace to suit their product. For me, the blanket generalisations based on shallow research that are accompanied by rampant self-promotion by self-styled experts are all symptoms of the problem with discussions of generational differences. At present, generational research has more in common with a marketing fad than a domain of knowledge that leaders can use to enhance organisational capability.

Cohort Effects

Marketers have a profound interest in differentiating between generations. Usually, this is achieved by drawing a direct comparison between the older and younger groups. Packaging these observations can be light-hearted. For example, the generations preceding Generation Y are reminded that, for today’s youth, ‘bottle caps have always been plastic and screw off’, or that the expression ‘You sound like a broken record’ does not make sense. As interesting as these observations might be, they are also meaningless.

Such observations usually originate from a superficial approach to trend analysis that involves scanning for shifts in behaviour by monitoring popular culture: for example, the ‘top ten’ of television programs, books or fashion. The marketer then identifies a theme that describes the behaviour, applies a label that captures the media’s imagination, and then markets it relentlessly. For example, ‘sea change’ is a descriptive label for a trend whereby the Baby Boomer generation supposedly accepted less income in exchange for an enhanced quality of life—preferably by the sea. Unfortunately, the ‘sea change’ label is applied indiscriminately. In general use, the term seems to imply that all Baby Boomers are fleeing the cities for the coast. While it might be that some affluent Baby Boomers—who the marketing community has a real interest in segmenting out of the general consumer population—were able to have a ‘sea change’, many Baby Boomers—to whom the marketing community would like to sell the aspiration of a ‘sea change’—like the generations preceding and succeeding them, will almost certainly work until they die; probably in the same geographic location. Conveniently, a new term has emerged to describe the flow of Baby Boomers in the opposite direction—the ‘green change’.¹³ Apparently, these Boomers are re-populating regional Australia. What unsettles me about these descriptive labels is that the behaviour is always described in attitudinal and aspirational terms. The rarely canvassed alternative argument is that people are making an economic decision based on a combination of individual means and a cost-benefit analysis that results in the ‘country’ or the ‘coast’ emerging as more attractive than the city. Would another generation of similar age and circumstances behave differently to the Baby Boomers? I suspect they would not. Is this a lasting and widespread effect among today’s Baby Boomers? It depends on the prevailing economic conditions, but again I suspect not. Are these types of generational observations important to the ADF? Yes, but only in a limited and specific sense.

We should not be reconsidering our personnel strategy, workforce management, or approach to leadership based on this type of trend analysis. It has some limited application for those attempting to have an immediate tactical effect; however, these tactical activities occur within a broader, more stable, and principles-based human resource management strategy. Adjusting the principles of this strategy on the basis of a transient social trend would be imprudent.

Economist John Quiggan is also a generational sceptic. Writing in the Australian Financial Review in 2000, he highlighted the fact that demographers differentiate between ‘cohort effects’ and ‘age effects’.¹⁴ In the remainder of the paper, I intend to explore and add to the points Quiggan raised within the structure of cohort and age effects.

Cohort effects refer to the fact that people born in a given period form a cohort that shares a set of common contextual experiences. For instance, shortly after Generation X began to enter the Australian workforce, the public and private sector moved into a prolonged period of instability marked by massive downsizing. The ‘job for life’ mentality, once a defining feature of the Australian workplace, began to disappear. Broadly, those described as Generation X were faced with a very different workplace to their parents. Generation X was required to adapt to a new work environment. This trend has accelerated to the extent that the ‘half-generation’ following (Generation Y) is accustomed to workplace uncertainty and this shapes the attitudes of that particular cohort. However, I part ways with the purveyors of generational marketing who argue that the underlying values of Generation Y are markedly different from the generations preceding them.¹⁵ Nor do I agree that the long-standing principles of good leadership should be abandoned to accommodate Generation Y.

In my view, comparing generations based on cohort effects is meaningless. A cohort effect speculates from general events in the environment to specific attitudes and behaviours of a generational cohort. This requires a significant leap of faith. This leap is made more difficult when the attitudes and behaviours of a particular generation are assumed to apply equally to all members of the cohort. This form of analysis carries with it a set of normative and linear planning assumptions that generally lead to simplistic conclusions such as: ‘Managers need to recognise and acknowledge the effort and performance of Gen Y employees on a regular basis.’¹⁶

ADF leaders should be far more critical of this form of research and the assumptions on which it is based. This is particularly relevant at a time when these same leaders have endorsed doctrinal concepts that describe a strategic environment in which the ADF’s ‘network-enabled’ workforce will need to be agile and diverse to solve increasingly complex military, social and political problems.

The Rhythm of History

Marketers seek to segment the marketplace so as to ensure efficient use of resources to achieve the maximum return. Generational marketers accentuate differences by making direct comparisons between generations based on supposed attitudinal differences that are derived from cohort effects. For example, they describe Generation Y as growing up in an environment in which market and social volatility is a given, technology and the media are pervasive, and social role models are celebrities rather than community leaders. The behavioural projection from this context is that Generation Y make ‘more responsible for life choices’, yearn for ‘recognition’, seek roles that offer ‘variety and flexibility’, and are ‘collaborative learners’. I suggest that these are socially desirable statements that would appeal to the entire population. Consequently, I don’t believe they are peculiar to a generation. As an aside, it is interesting to note that negative statements about a cohort rarely arise from the analytical efforts or speculation of generational marketers or ‘social researchers’. Instead, the generation’s negative characteristics are presented as the jealousies of the ‘other’ generations. For instance, Generation Y see the Baby Boomers as ‘technophobes’ and ‘rule-makers’, while Generation X are said to see the same group as ‘having no work-life balance’ or ‘set in their ways’. For reasons that I will discuss in detail later, I suggest that circumstances have always been this way. The difference is that today we have indulged in some analysis to understand the distinctions and developed specific labels to explain the phenomenon. This does not constitute a ‘new’ discovery, nor does it automatically mean the observation is relevant or useful.

While we are on the subject of generational uniqueness, I should point out that I find the claims made for Generation X and Y (which I don’t see as two distinct generations) particularly annoying. According to the ‘experts’, globalisation—driven by advances in computing, communications, and transportation technology—is creating a unique set of conditions that is having a profound impact on the attitudes and behaviours of today’s youth. These marketing myths sell the idea that a prodigal generation is emerging as society’s saviours.¹⁷ Only Generation Y, we are led to believe (usually by Generation Y), have the mix of skills required to lead us towards a better tomorrow. You may sense that I have my reservations. There is no doubt that this generation will lead us into the future; however, it will not be due to the attitudinal and behavioural characteristics they developed in response to their environment. Rather, it will be because this generation will move, as the generations preceding it have, into positions of power as a result of the preceding generation’s exit.

In addition, today’s environmental conditions are not unique, and therefore neither is Generation X nor Y. The technological conditions leading up to the Great War look remarkably similar to those we face today. Advances in computing and communications technology—information-processing technologies—shaped the character of industrial operations in the period leading up to the First World War. The challenges faced by that generation in the late 19th and early 20th century are similar to those facing us at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. This recalls Mark Twain’s observation that ‘history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes’. The key features of ‘globalisation’ from approximately 1875 to 1914 included:

• Communication: Advances in communication technology moved rapidly from the time Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876 and Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated long-wave telegraphy in 1895. The people of this time saw the benefits of long-wave telegraphy with trans-Atlantic wireless communication established by 1901 and public radio broadcasting by 1906.
   
• Computing: The ‘punch card’ system designed to automate the Jacquard loom in 1801 had evolved by 1890 into a sophisticated information processing technology that the US government used to tabulate census data. This innovation gave life to International Business Machines (IBM) and the possibility of computer-automated information processing and analysis.
   
• Transportation: Parallel developments in telegraphy and railway engineering continued to advance through to the turn of the 20th century and the prospect for almost instantaneous communication became a distinct possibility, while the railroad increased the speed and decreased the cost of long-distance travel.

The impact of this transformation was not lost on French sociologist Emile Durkheim. In his book The Division of Labour in Society (1893), Durkheim noted that industrialisation broke down the barriers to transportation and communication, leaving previously isolated markets open to wider national and international market forces. The result was that the producer could no longer ‘embrace the market at a glance, not even in thought’.¹⁸ Potentially, the market was now limitless. Durkheim was witnessing the growing interdependence and integration of society and this was demanding a new approach to social control, communication and information management. The effect described is not dissimilar to today’s generic descriptions of globalisation that stress the ‘death of distance’ and the ‘faster movement of ideas, of technologies, of cultures and economies among nations and individuals’. Today’s globalisation is often coupled with a strong sense that the intensity of ‘interaction’ and ‘interconnectedness’ between states and societies is increasing.¹⁹ Accordingly, those living through this period were experiencing similar effects to those described for Generations X and Y. The era leading up to the Great War was an innovative, complex and challenging time; an era filled with technology-driven change as profound as that encountered by today’s generations.

It is a long-standing and well-known fact that context shapes behaviour. So, I have no argument with the assertion that there is a cohort effect. However, I do have concerns about the weight accorded to this effect in the generational literature.

Phil Ruthven, Chairman of the Australian business information provider IBIS World and a well-regarded social researcher, describes four types of generations that repeat in a continual cycle which reflects social history. Ruthven labels the four generations:²⁰

• Adaptives, who are raised in a period of social fragmentation. This generally silent group is an obedient but socially aware generation that focuses on adapting wealth-building to advance social needs.
   
• Idealists, who are raised in a period of social emergence and liberation. These generations are often the social visionaries, humanists or social re-engineers.
   
• Reactives, who are raised in a period of high social stability or conservatism. These generations are the reactive and conciliatory generations who consolidate change and repair the damage of the idealists who preceded them.
   
• Civics, who are raised in a period of crisis. These generations are the wealth creators and nation-builders. They have a pragmatic and rationalist approach to problem-solving.

While this represents yet another approach to generational market segmentation, the addition of an historical and cyclical perspective does introduce a sense of time and history that takes some of the hubris out of today’s discussion of generational differences. A superficial observer of today’s dialogue could easily form the opinion that the observed generational differences are a new phenomenon that has only emerged with the rise of the demographic bubble labelled ‘Baby Boomers’. Indeed, until Douglas Copeland popularised the term ‘Generation X’ in the title of his 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Society, generational differences were not an issue of concern for public or private sector leaders.²¹ There has always been a ‘generation gap’, but it was not a significant leadership, management or strategic personnel issue. I would like to know what has changed to make it such a volatile and immediate issue for today’s leaders.

Age Effects

A remark generally attributed to Plato in the 4th Century BC demonstrates that older generations denouncing younger generations as slack and idle is not a new phenomenon. Apparently, Plato despaired: ‘What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?’

The often-observed ‘problem’ with young adults is an ‘age effect’ common to all generations. In part, it stems from the ‘it wouldn’t have happened in my day’ reminiscences of the preceding generation, which is another age effect. Age effects take account of the fact that, at any given point, every generational cohort passes through a particular age where they share something in common with the generations that preceded them. In sharing an age, each generation also shares passage through a life-cycle stage—the ‘classic’ shared age effect is the mid-life crisis. Age effects are more stable, and therefore more predictable, than cohort effects. Rebellion against authority is a consistent feature of a maturing adult—it is an age effect. While the character of the rebellion may suit the times and the individual’s circumstances, the underlying phenomenon remains relatively stable. In every generation early adulthood is broadly characterised by anti-authoritarian and anti-social behaviour. However, even this attempt at extrapolation leads to problems. For instance, the young Baby Boomers of the 1960s are characterised as anti-authoritarian hippies who pushed the boundaries of social norms, although even a cursory examination of this generalisation would reveal that soldiers serving in Vietnam at the time, or those quietly working in government and business, probably did not fall into the extreme category of ‘hippie’. While I consider age effects as more important than cohort effects, it is the interaction between the two that defines a generation.

Army Officer Corps demographics share both cohort and age effects and provide a clearer example of practicalities of the cohort and age effect interaction. The Directorate of Officer Career Management manages and develops this part of the Army workforce in rank cohorts. However, each cohort also passes through recognisable career stages that are closely aligned to age and life-stage. The challenge for career managers is to balance the occasionally competing demands of transitory cohort effects against the more lasting age effects. In 1999, the then Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Frank Hickling, established the Officer Professional Effectiveness Review—Army (Project OPERA) to, in part, ‘examine the professional effectiveness of officers and to establish the factors constraining their performance and influencing their motivation to remain in the Service ... and develop a strategy for developing the Army officers of the future.’²² Not surprisingly, Project OPERA found that retaining officers has less to do with their cohort and more to do with their life and career stage. This finding was reinforced by the fact that, some twenty years earlier, a team investigating similar workforce development issues, the Regimental Officers Development Committee, made similar observations about the behaviour and attitudes of officers who were transitioning from one life or career stage to the next. Project OPERA’s resultant personnel strategy attempted to provide the flexibility to account for cohort effects but focused predominately on catering for the more enduring age effects such as life and career stage.

My point is that understanding workforce management and development is among the most critical and complex operations undertaken in administering the ADF. Simplistic market segmentation based on dubious research without any reference to a strategic framework that is relevant to, in the case of the Army, generating land power, adds little value. Organisationally and professionally, we need to be more focused and critical in our thinking on these issues. That does not mean rejecting the information out of hand; however, it does mean applying some critical professional judgement.

The Discussion has the Wrong Shape

I believe that our discussion of generational differences has the wrong shape. We are focusing on tactical issues without reference to the foundations of our institution or the more enduring principles of people and work. In the remainder of this paper I will outline my view on the important components of workforce strategy. It is not my intention to argue that the personnel system is broken—it isn’t. My focus is on sketching those features of workforce strategy that we all acknowledge as important but rarely discuss directly. These interdependent forces are vital to generating workforce capability and are enduring.

Context shapes behaviour, military culture shapes military people. Military culture is both a professional norm and a national tradition that fundamentally affects the attitudes and behaviours of the military workforce. It guides the workforce’s perceptions of who they are and how they should behave. It influences the structure of the organisation, and it determines the strategies selected to overcome the challenges the institution faces. Military culture provides individuals with a common sense of purpose, identity, belonging and security that is necessary to fulfil the institution’s role in society. It is a stable feature of the institution that is central to workforce management and development.

Similarly, people have an enduring set of needs that is reflected in that culture. In the past I have categorised these under the headings of meaning, leadership, cohesion, security and engagement. These are common workforce needs that might be expressed differently in each generation but which remain at the foundation of workforce management and development.

• Meaning. People seek meaning in their lives. They seek to make sense of their surroundings and their place in them. A clear sense of purpose and a sound ethical framework is the source of personal and collective meaning. Military culture provides the conceptual and social framework that endows members with a sense of purpose and belonging. This ‘psychological contract’ is voluntary, subjective, dynamic and informal.²³ The dynamic character of the contract means that individual and organisational expectations influence one another. The ADF’s people take steps to fulfil their obligations and look to their leaders to fulfil their obligations within the perceived terms of the contract. The psychological contract has changed markedly over the past twenty years and ensuring that we understand institutional and individual expectations remains an important strategic personnel activity.
   
• Leadership. People want to be led, but they exercise choice in who will lead and for how long. The ADF relies on experienced leaders who have the flexibility to meet the challenges of unfamiliar problems presented in unfamiliar contexts. To complement these leaders, all ADF members must be flexible, adaptive, skilled and informed so as to provide the leaders with more options to seize and retain the initiative in achieving the ADF’s goals. Supporting leaders is an enduring feature of the Defence Department’s and the ADF’s human resource management strategy.
   
• Cohesion. People experience a sense of satisfaction when they feel they belong to a valued or worthwhile social entity with a shared sense of purpose and identity. The military is often referred to as a family and it is satisfying to share the ‘tribal spirit’ that characterises each service and unit. The ADF has long recognised that ‘morale’ is an expression of social cohesion. Morale is the group expression of the satisfaction that comes from a sense of purpose, belonging and identity. Social cohesion is a strategic military asset that derives from the central purpose of the institution.
   
• Security. There are three main elements of security in the service career: security of employment; security of employability; and security of lifestyle. Security of employment relates to the need to feel that you will continue to ‘have a job’: that the organisation will not dispense with you as long as you are fit for duty. Security of employability relates to the need to feel that you are developing skills that have external value. It is about maintaining the currency of individual professional skills. Security of lifestyle relates to the need to feel that your quality of family life is, at the least, not degraded by service life. Security, stability and predictability are central features of the psychological contract between the ADF and its people. There is no evidence to suggest that security is no longer a sought-after feature of a military career, only that its characteristics have changed. For example, the coming generations may not value security of employment to the same extent as security of employability and lifestyle. Regardless, security remains an important facet of service life.
   
• Engagement. Job satisfaction is a key driver in the decision to stay in the service and leadership is the most influential variable affecting job satisfaction. Individual and collective success is the most important factor in shaping satisfaction. A successful career is important to an individual because the career role defines his or her identity. Feelings of social worth are reinforced by successful operational performance and eroded by adverse publicity. Similarly, work that uses and enhances professional skills reinforces the person’s sense of identity. Consequently, engagement through effective career management and professional development systems is central to sustaining the Defence workforce.

Many of the supposed ‘generational differences’ would return to the margins of our discussions about the future workforce if the ADF was, through an effective personnel strategy, able to manage these five principles.

Strategy Over Tactics

Many of the investigations into the ADF’s workforce management and development carry the recommendation that those responsible will need to ‘develop good human resource strategies to attract new staff’. In itself this is a relatively empty statement. The aim should be to develop a human resource strategy to attract and retain ADF members that is attentive to the link between capability requirements and future demographics. A corollary to this aim is that the ADF attracts a certain type of person; in general, it attracts people who are by nature conservative and adhere to a sense of community service. It is reasonable to assume that the general population has many people with these basic characteristics, and that they are not limited to particular generational groupings. We should therefore be mindful that, by catering too strongly for cohort effects related to a particular generation, be they Boomers, Generation X or Y expectations, we may, in the process, alienate those who are truly attracted to serving in the ADF. I would suggest that we begin by developing a personnel strategy that taps the enduring features of the military culture and work, and includes the ability to be flexible in applying the tactics that we use to retain, reshape and recruit the workforce.

Endnotes

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1    Everett Carll Ladd, ‘The Twentysomethings: ‘Generation Myths’ Revisited’, The Public Perspective, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1994, p. 14.

2    Julianne Schultz, ‘Introduction: Searching for the next big thing’, Griffith Review, Spring 2006, p. 7.

3    Creed O’Hanlon, ‘My generation, Griffith Review, Spring 2006, p. 25.

4    Bruce Grant, What kind of country? Australia and the twenty-first century, Penguin, Melbourne, 1988, p. 28.

5    Colonel Lloyd J. Matthews, ‘The uniformed intellectual and his place in American arms: Part I’, Army Magazine, July 2002, p. 24.

6    Commonwealth of Australia, Serving Australia: The Australian Defence Force in the Twenty-first Century, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995. The latest and ongoing review is the ‘Ministerial Review into Recruitment and Retention’ initiated in 2005 and due to report in 2006.

7    Rudyard Kipling first published the Just So Stories for Little Children in 1902. They are extravgant accounts of how natural phenomena came about, for instance ‘how the tiger got his stripes’. Later the phrase ‘just so story’ acquired meaning in evolutionary biology as an unnecessarily elaborate and speculative evolutionary explanation that was widely accepted as fact despite the lack of empirical evidence to support the contention. Stephen Jay Gould referred to Robin Wright’s claims in his book The Moral Animal that the Stone Age adaptation of a sweet tooth leads to today’s unhealthy obesity as a classic ‘just so story’. Wright reasoned that, ‘The classic example of an adaptation that has outlived its logic is the sweet tooth. Our fondness for sweetness was designed for an environment in which fruit existed but candy didn’t.’ For Stephen Jay Gould, this is a just so story that has been accepted as fact but for which there is absolutely no evidence.

8    David Schmidtchen, ‘Australian population and workforce trends: The strategic human resource challenges and opportunities facing Army’, Australian Defence Force Journal, January/February, 2000, pp. 17–24.

9    Erin Maulday, ‘Generational Evolution in the Australian Army’, Australian Army Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 2006.

10  Three recent books seem to be the source of renewed discussion about Generation Y ‘issues’. Peter Sheahan, Generation Y, Hardie Grant Publishing, Melbourne, 2005; Ryan Heath, Please Just F**k Off it’s Our turn Now, Pluto Press, Melbourne, 2006; Rebecca Huntley, The World According to Y, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006.

11  Collaborative research by ‘social researcher’ and emerging ‘generational expert’ Mark McCrindle and Drake International reported by Stephanie Dinnell, ‘The Y Front’, HR Monthly, May, 2006, pp. 24–6. This research was apparently based on a survey of 3000 Generation Y employees and ‘in-depth’ focus groups with 32 people. Stephanie Dinnell is an organisational psychologist employed at Drake International. The research is available by e-mail from: <marketing@au.drakeintl.com>.

12  Ross DePinto, Emerging Leaders Research Survey Summary Report, Center for Creative Leadership, <www.ccl.org.leadership/pdf/research/elsummary.pdf&gt;.

13  Reflecting the constant battle over labelling, the ‘green change’ is also known as the ‘tree change’.

14  John Quiggan, ‘The end of the generation game’, Australian Financial Review, Review Section, 27 October 2000.

15  Comments by KPMG’s ‘demographer’ Bernard Salt reported by Roberta Mancuso ‘Today’s youth “a different life form” from parents’, Canberra Times, 27 May 2006. Salt is reported to have said that ‘They [Generation Y] hold different values to baby boomers at the equivalent stage of the life cycle’

16  Stephanie Dinnell, ‘The Y Front, HR Monthly, May, 2006, p. 26.

17  The title of Ryan Heath’s book ‘Please Just F**k Off it’s Our turn Now’ captures the sentiment.

18  Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. George Simpson, Free Press, New York, 1937 (1893), p. 370.

19  See John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge, A Future perfect: a Challenge and Hidden promise of globalisation, London, Random House, 2000 and Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Harper Collins, London, 2000; B.M. Jain, ‘Globalisation and Regionalisation in International Relations and Foreign Policy: a Critique of Existing Paradigms’, Journal of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2001, pp. 1–25.

20  Phil Ruthven, ‘The changing workforce of the 21st century’, Work Life Balance Conference, Hyatt Regency Perth, February 22–3, 2006. The presentation is available at: <docep.wa.gov.au/lr/WorkLife/Media/Phil_Ruthven.pdf>.

21  Douglas Copeland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Society, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1991.

22  Australian Army, Officer Professional Effectiveness Review–Army (Project OPERA), 1999.

23        The psychological contract is a set of mutual, unwritten beliefs or expectations about the obligations between the ADF and its people. See David Schmidtchen, ‘Rethinking the psychological contract between Army and its people’, Australian Defence Force Journal, July/August, 1999, pp. 5–8.