© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
International Journal of Training and Development 22:4 ISSN 1360-3736
doi: 10.1111/ijtd.12138
The meaning of working for young people:
the case of the millennials
Amelia Manuti, Antonietta Curci and Beatrice Van der
Heijden
The meaning people attribute to working is a multidimen-sional construct, accounting for personal values, expectations, beliefs and attitudes towards work, which originates and develops because of life cycle experiences. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to the investigation of the ‘meaning of working’ by focusing on the causal relationships between the core components of the construct in a sample of young people – namely the Millennials – who have not yet entered the labour market. Participants, 466 high school and 357 university stu-dents, selected from different educational domains, were invited to fill in a questionnaire encompassing the central var-iables of the ‘meaning of working’ protocol (that is, work cen-trality, work goals, valued working outcomes and societal norms about work). Results showed a direct relationship between work centrality and valued working outcomes, and a partial mediation effect of work goals and societal norms about work, in the relationship with work centrality. The results raise several research questions which need to be answered by further investigation, both as regards the current evolution of the construct of the meaning of working and as regards its measurement. The results can also be useful in help-ing to plan tailor-made vocational guidance programmes as well as organizational training and development interven-tions targeted on the specific features of this new workforce.
Introduction
The meaning people attribute to working could be considered as a multidimensional construct, accounting for personal values, expectations, beliefs and attitudes towards work, which originate and develop as a consequence of life cycle experiences.
❒ Amelia Manuti, The first and second authors are at the University of Bari, Italy Email: amelia. [email protected]. The third author is at Radboud University, Institute for Management Research, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Open University of the Netherlands; Kingston University, UK; and at Hubei University, Wuhan, China
This definition is indebted to the authoritative contribution carried out by the Meaning of Working (MOW) Research Team, that is an extensive body of cross-national organizational research collaborators, whose main goal was to investigate the impor-tance and centrality of working within individuals’ lives sMOW Team, 1987OW. In the absence of a well-articulated theory, the MOW Team developed a heuristic model assuming that the meaning of working consisted of three sets of variables: saOW condi-tional variables santecedentsOW, sbOW core variables swork centrality, work goals, societal norms about work, valued working outcomes and work role identificationOW and scOW consequences sHarpaz y Fu, 2002; MOW Team, 1987; England y Whitely, 1990; Ruiz-Quintanilla y England, 1996OW.
Most of the empirical evidence supporting the validity of the meaning of work-ing construct has focused on its core variables, because the main aim of the MOW Team was to ‘theoretically describe different bases for the attachment of individuals to the phenomenon of working’ sMOW Team, 1987, p. 16OW. As a result, previous empir-ical research pertaining to the MOW construct, consisting of replication studies over time, using different employees from different occupational sectors, and performing cross-cultural validations, has predominantly devoted attention to show the psycho-metric qualities of the measures. In particular, the results of some psychopsycho-metric tests have highlighted that only three of the core MOW variables swork centrality, soci-etal norms about work and valued work outcomesOW empirically persisted through-out the analyses as the major representations of the MOW concepts sRuiz-Quintanilla y Claes, 2000OW, whereas others have shown that all central variables have proven to be significant elements in predicting future workers career adjustment behaviours sFroese, 2013; Marajah y Schlechter, 2007OW. MOW follow-up studies ssee for example, Ardichvili, 2005; Harpaz y Fu, 2002; Kuchinke et al., 2009OW concentrated on five pri-mary domains, that is, work centrality, work goals, societal norms about work, work role identification and valued working outcomes. Efforts to refine the dimensionality and validity of the construct are still ongoing, with some studies concentrating on the formulation of the items that define the meaning of working ssee for example, England y Harpaz, 1990OW, and some others focusing on the stability of a smaller number of fac-tors composing the construct over time sfor example, Snir y Harpaz, 2002OW.
However, a feature in common to all the studies reported is that most of the MOW scholarly work has focused on the validation of the so-called MOW model and has assumed that each of the core variables might equally contribute to define the MOW construct, and might equally relate to both its antecedents and consequences. Accordingly, there is a serious lack of research into the causal relationships between the core variables.
In view of the above, this contribution is primarily aimed at examining four of the original MOW core variables, being those that the literature found to persist across time, gender, age and nationality sRuiz-Quintanilla y Claes, 2000OW, namely work cen-trality, work goals, societal norms about work and valued working outcomes.
Moreover, the investigation of this innovative conceptualization of the MOW con-struct is linked to the exploration of the MOW meanings that actually guide young people, being drawn here from the present Millennials’ generation while approaching their first work experience. Within the MOW framework young people are considered active producers of their own work socialization through their behaviour and work personality, including their own MOW perceptions sHarpaz et al., 2002OW. Moreover, starting up a career, performing all kinds of activities and making subsequent career moves are important because they shape an individual’s initial work role development through their impact on work meanings, work-related strategies and behavioural pat-terns. Work meanings that are developed during this period will serve as a guideline to assess and to evaluate future work-related experiences sClaes y Ruiz Quintanilla, 1994; Harpaz, Honig, y Coetsier, 2002; Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1994OW. Accordingly, dimen-sions referring to personal values, expectations, beliefs and attitudes towards work that are inspiring individual plans and behaviours at any stage of one’s working career should be considered as an authentic part of the MOW construct. In this vein, by choos-ing this particular target group, the paper also aims to contribute to the investigation
of the redefinition of the meaning attached to work by the current generation of young people, namely the Millennials.
Literature review
Within the last decades, many radical economic, cultural and social changes have redefined the meaning attached to one’s work and career sBaruch, 2003; Briscoe et al., 2006; Burke y Ng, 2006; Hall, 2004; King, 2004OW. The rising globalization of mar-kets, advancements regarding the use of new technology, a higher turnover rate in the workforce, increasing emphases on knowledge work and diversity management, and growing outsourcing practices have contributed to a huge transformation regard-ing the traditional career pattern sBurke y Ng, 2006; Sullivan y Baruch, 2009OW. With a substantial restructuring of working life, different types of careers have emerged, career paths have become blurred and throughout the globe individuals are starting to attach a wider meaning to career success sBaruch y Bozionelos, 2011; Briscoe y Finkelstein, 2009; Sullivan y Baruch, 2009OW. sifetime employment in one and the same organization has been gradually replaced by boundaryless sArthur, 2014OW and protean sHall, 2002OW career paths, forcing people to rethink about their work experience in terms of a collection of meaningful professional tasks and responsibilities rather, than in terms of a stable relationship with one single organization for one’s entire working life.
The main consequence of the substantial restructuring process of working life lies in a basic redefinition of the meaning attached to working, which is conceptualized in this contribution as a multidimensional construct, encompassing personal values, expectations, beliefs and attitudes towards work.
Indeed, research on MOW stems from a long multidisciplinary tradition investigat-ing the major sources and the individual processes that make work meaninvestigat-ingful and that consequently might have impact on personal life and on organizational behaviour ssee Rosso et al., for a reviewOW. Within this tradition, a psychological perspective, assuming that meaning derives by subjective interpretations of work experiences and interactions, has opposed to a sociological perspective maintaining that people attach different meanings to certain aspects of their lives in a way that is consistent with socially accepted value systems sPratt y Ashforth, 2003OW. However, most of the empir-ical research produced in the field of organizational behaviour has highlighted the primary role played by individual beliefs and cognitions on societal and cultural worl-dviews in shaping and driving meanings sWrzesniewski, 2003; Wrzesniewski, Dutton, y Debebe, 2003OW.
In line with such evidence and given its aims, the present study moved from the heuristic model developed by the MOW Team that, as already described in the intro-duction, specifies: saOW conditional variables santecedentsOW, sbOW core variables and scOW consequences sHarpaz y Fu, 2002; MOW Team, 1987; Ruiz-Quintanilla y England, 1996OW. Conditional variables encompass one’s personal and family situation, one’s present job and career history, and one’s macro socio-economic environment. Core variables are the key MOW factors: work centrality, work goals, societal norms about work, work role identification and working outcomes. Finally, consequences are con-ceived as subjective expectations about future working situations and objective out-comes of working.
set us continue with defining the key MOW factors. Work centrality has been defined as the degree of general and relative importance that work has in the life of individuals. General work centrality is the absolute importance of work in people’s life whereas relative centrality refers to the role played by work as compared with other areas of life sEngland, 1991; Ruiz-Quintanilla y Wilpert, 1991OW.
Similarly, the construct of work goals has been considered as the whole of values sought and preferred by individuals in their working lives ssawler y Porter, 1966; socke, 1976; Weiss et al., 1964OW. Building upon the work by Triandis s1972OW, societal norms about work are described as a set of normative assumptions about what indi-viduals should expect from working sopportunities or entitlementsOW, and what they
should expect to contribute through working sobligationsOW. The entitlement norm rep-resents the underlying rights of individuals and the work-related responsibilities of organizations and society to all individuals si.e. all members of society are entitled to have work if they desire soOW. Entitlements derive from standards or reasoning about property rights and the psychological contract as applied to the work setting. The obli-gation norm represents the work duties of all individuals to organizations and to soci-ety si.e. everyone has a duty to contribute to socisoci-ety by workingOW. Obligations, norms or duties derive from standards of reasoning about internalized personal responsibil-ity and social or institutional commitment, in accordance with the Protestant work ethic sRandall y Cote, 1991OW. Finally, valued working outcomes refer to the general outcomes sought from working, and the relative importance of each of these goals. Inspired by Kaplan and Tausky s1974OW, this construct distinguishes six fundamental reasons for working, namely acquiring status and prestige, providing income, pro-viding interesting social contacts, keeping people occupied, serving society, and being intrinsically interesting and satisfying.
Most efforts of the MOW scholars to empirically validate the MOW construct as described above concentrated on adult populations, whereas less attention has been devoted to validation for young adults who are about to enter the labour market. The exception is research on MOW with students but the target sample here involved only those students attending vocational-technical schools and/or students who worked part-time.
In addition, the basic MOW instruments have been used in the framework of another longitudinal large-scale research sWork Socialization of Youth project – WOSY, 1989OW. The empirical results of the WOSY project confirmed that, for young people taking their first steps in the labour market, the MOW constitutes an important component. It appeared to explain significantly their attitudes, feelings and behaviour in the world of work. As such, the MOW may determine the first experience of career starters. On the other hand, the first experiences of career starters in the labour market may also determine the meaning they themselves attach to work, and their MOW patterns may reflect these experiences sScholarios et al., 2003OW.
Accordingly, within the field of vocational psychology Supers’ seminal contribution s1980OW has underlined the importance of studying how young people choose occupa-tions as to better understand how they develop their careers. In other words, according to the well-known lifespan model of career development sSuper, 1980OW, young people generally start developing representations of their career very early during education. These representations are deeply influenced by values, beliefs and attitudes towards work that are either directly or indirectly experienced, and shape the MOW. As such, these representations of their career will concretely guide young people in choosing their career, and thus are expected to have impact on the so-called subjective expecta-tions about future working situaexpecta-tions. Empirical evidence in the field of research con-firms that work values, work goals and normative attitudes towards work are indeed critical variables in the career development process ssee for instance, Brown, 2002OW. In a similar vein, MOW was shown to be a significant antecedent of several career man-agement indicators among career starters, such as job crafting sWrzesnieswky, 2003; Wrzesniewski y Dutton, 2001OW, career success sNg et al., 2005OW, passivity in career plan-ning sPeiró et al., 2002OW and career self-management behaviours sSturges et al., 2010OW.
These basic assumptions about the absolute relevance of the meaning of working for young adults are further enriched by a highly important phenomenon that par-allels the main changes described earlier, and which is progressively redesigning the present workforce; that is to say, the entry of the Millennial generation in the labour market sHarris-Boundy y Flatt, 2010OW. The Millennial generation comprises the young workers that are born between 1981 and in the early 2000s sSmola y Sutton, 2002OW, also named Generation Y, NetGen, Nexters and the Nexus Generation sBarnard et al., 1998; Burke y Ng, 2006; Zemke et al., 2000OW.
In recent years, both scientific literature and the public press have devoted much attention to the Millennial generation, producing increasing discussion about their features, their attitudes and the meaning they attach to work. Some studies have
argued that Millennials are assertive and extremely self-confident sHill, 2008; Howe y Stauss, 2007OW – this is the reason why some authors also call them ‘Generation Me’ sTrzesniewski et al., 2008OW. Others state that they are ambitious, value organizational training and development, prefer meaningful work, and seek for personal fulfil-ment in their jobs sDe Hauw y De Vos, 2010; soughlin y Barling, 2001; Rawlins et al., 2008OW. In line with these characterizations, an important stream of research focused on Millennials’ work attitudes, showing that young people belonging to this generation display higher levels of individualism than collectivism sNg et al., 2010OW, that they are motivated by significant tasks, and that they expect organizations to respond to them positively based upon their experiences, needs and desires sDe Hauw y De Vos, 2010; Hershatter y Epstein, 2010; Myers y Sadaghiani, 2010OW.
Furthermore, Millennials, generally, report higher levels of overall company satisfac-tion and satisfacsatisfac-tion with job security, recognisatisfac-tion and career advancement in compari-son with their counterparts from previous generations, being members of the so-called Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 and Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980 sSmola y Sutton, 2002OW. In addition, Millennials are entrepreneurial thinkers who demand autonomy, responsibility and immediate feedback. They expect a frequent sense of accomplishment and have a high need for organizational engagement and support sMartin, 2005OW. Although Millennials have an urgent sense of immediacy, they adapt well to new people, places and circumstances, thriving in environments with constant change. As such, we argue that Millennials are beneficial to companies under-going change processes.
Based on the theoretical outline given above, in this contribution, we have devel-oped a new research model wherein the previously mentioned critical variables in the career development process are hypothesized to be mediators in the relationship between relative work centrality and valued working outcomes.
Therefore, as highlighted earlier, the main objective of the present study is to inves-tigate an innovative conceptualization of the MOW construct, with special reference to young people sthe Millennials’ generationOW approaching their first work experience.
Accordingly, work role identification was excluded from the list of core variables analysed, because the students involved did not have any work experience. This study adds to the literature on the MOW by focusing upon a largely unstudied pop-ulation, namely young people, for whom the meaning of working plays a central role in the process of career development and career management. Moreover, the focus on Millennials allows us to further investigate the change in the MOW that might be a result of the wider transformation of the labour market and consequently of the working life. The original international MOW study s1987OW already showed interest-ing meaninterest-ing of workinterest-ing patterns highlightinterest-ing that for young people work was not as central as for working adults, that young people mostly manifested an intrinsic work orientation, that they were mostly oriented towards the entitlement norm, and that they mostly sought social and intrinsic outcomes of working. The general outcomes from this earlier work show the prominent role played by work centrality. In order to increase our knowledge in this important field of research, the main purpose was to test if, and to what extent, work centrality is a significant antecedent of valued work-ing outcomes sHypothesis 1OW, and to investigate whether work goals sHypothesis 2OW and societal norms sHypothesis 3OW partly mediated the effect of work centrality upon valued working outcomes among a sample of young Italian students.
Method
Participants and procedure
For the purpose of this study, only students who were in their last year of education, thus approaching the labour market, were contacted. Data were collected in 2012. Questionnaires were distributed randomly during or high school and college classes. The distributed questionnaires were introduced by means of a short text explain-ing that the study dealt with the meanexplain-ing of workexplain-ing, and with the strategies the
respondents generally adopted to plan their future career. Participants were asked to think about what working meant to them, both in the present situation and in the future. They were told that the information provided was dealt with strictly confi-dential, and that the outcomes from the different respondents would be aggregated, and analysed as a whole. Finally, they were told that there were no right or wrong answers, given the fact that the study was concerned with personal perceptions.
A total of 823 responses were received sresponse rate 82.3 per centOW. The final sam-ple comprised 466 high school s56.6 per centOW and 357 college students s43.4 per centOW, selected from different educational domains, and from several high schools and facul-ties within the city of Bari, in the south of Italy were contacted.
Participants were born between 1992 and 1994. The mean age of the high school students was 18.44 years sSD = 0.66OW, ranging from 17 to 21 years s48.9 per cent males and 51.1 per cent femalesOW.
The mean age of college students was 20.18 sSD = 2.10OW, ranging from 18 to 51 s35.6 per cent males and 64.4 per cent femalesOW sTable 1OW.
Measures
For the purpose of the present study and for the peculiarities of the sample involved, the Meaning of Working construct has been conceptually defined in terms of the fol-lowing four factors.
Table 1: Sample composition
Participants Sample distribution School or faculty typology Sample distribution High School students males 228 Classical gymnasium 81 females 238 Scientific gymnasium 149 Artistic gymnasium 31 singuistic gymnasium 46 Commercial education 105 Technical education 54
M age sSDOW 18.44 s0.66OW College students males 127 Economics 56 females 230 Communication Sciences 50 Psychology 55 Engineering 60 Foreign sanguages 18 siterature 46 Political Sciences 31 Chemistry 41
Relative work centrality
This index refers to the degree of general importance that working has in the life of individuals at any given point in time. It was assessed by requesting participants to distribute a total of 100 points over some areas of their life, such as family, community, work, religion and leisure. The Italian version of this scale was translated by Depolo s1998OW.
Work goals
Adopting the original MOW measurement, respondents were invited to rank 11 work goals, or aspects of working life, according to their importance: saOW opportunity to learn, sbOW interpersonal contacts, scOW possibility for promotion, sdOW working hours, seOW variety, sfOW interesting work, sgOW job security, shOW match between job and abilities, siOW pay, sjOW working conditions and skOW autonomy. The Italian version of this scale was developed by Depolo s1998OW.
Societal norms about work
Respondents evaluated a set of 10 normative statements about work in terms of what people should expect from working entitlements sfive itemsOW se.g. ‘If a worker’s skills become outdated, his or her employer should be responsible for retraining’OW, and obli-gations sfive itemsOW se.g. ‘It is the duty of every able-bodied citizen to contribute to society by working’OW. Respondents rated these normative statements on a four-point scale sranging from 1 ‘strongly disagree’ to 4 ‘strongly agree’OW. The Italian version of this scale was translated by Depolo s1998OW.
Valued working outcomes
Respondents were asked to distribute a total of 100 points over the following six out-comes that work provides: saOW status and prestige, sbOW income, scOW time absorption, sdOW interesting contacts, seOW service to society and sfOW satisfaction. The Italian version of this scale was translated by Depolo s1998OW.
Age was measured by asking respondents to fill in their date of birth. Statistical analyses of the MOW scales
In order to aggregate each set of indicators scorresponding to the different latent con-structs of relative centrality, work goals, societal norms, valued working outcomesOW in single composite scores, the SPSS CatPCA sCategorical Principal Component AnalysisOW procedure was used. CatPCA is an exploratory analysis aimed at identify-ing the latent dimensions with mixed measurement models, underlyidentify-ing a set of vari-ables, such as those assessed by the MOW questionnaire si.e. ranking, 4-point scales, distribution of scores, etc.OW.
Separate analyses were run on each set of indicators, and, for each set, the uni- dimensional solution was considered. The purpose was to aggregate each set of indi-cators into one summary measure, so that this new measure represented the observed data with the least loss of information possible. Table 2 reports the Eigen values and reliabilities, assessed using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, for the considered solu-tions. All scale reliabilities, except for societal norms s0.58OW, appeared to exceed 0.60.
Table 2: CatPCA eigenvalues and Cronbach’s alphas
Composite variables Eigenvalues Cronbach’s alpha
Relative Centrality 2.61 0.77
Work Goals 2.44 0.65
Societal Norms 2.10 0.58
Valued Working
Given the fact that students have similar age and education it was not necessary to control for these variables.
For each set of variables, the CatPCA procedure assigned individuals a standard-ized score, which was subsequently entered in the analyses. Using these standardstandard-ized scores, we applied a mediator model sPreacher y Hayes, 2008OW through the PROCESS SPSS computational tool sHayes, 2012OW in order to test the hypothesis that work goals and societal norms mediated the effect of Relative Centrality upon Valued Working Goals ssee Figure 1OW. A non-parametric bootstrapping method was used to obtain a robust estimation of both direct and indirect effects sPreacher y Hayes, 2008OW, which provided a confidence interval sCIOW for each estimated parameter. Estimates are sig-nificant if the interval between the upper limit sUsOW and lower limit sssOW of a boot-strapped 95 per cent CI does not contain zero, which means that the effect is different from zero sPreacher y Hayes, 2008OW. As shown in Table 3, both working goals and soci-etal norms appeared to partially mediate the relationship between relative centrality and valued working outcomes, however, the bootstrapped estimation of the indirect effect of working goals led to a CI including zero, herewith indicating that the estimate was not found to be robust enough.
Discussion and conclusions
The main purpose of this study was to investigate an innovative conceptualization of the MOW construct, with special reference to young people approaching their first work experience, belonging to the so-called Millennials’ generation. As such, the overall objective of this empirical work was to fill a gap in the literature about the Meaning of Working field on young people attempting at investigating the causal relationships between the core components of the construct and to contextualize the study within the wider frame of the present radical changes in the labour market and consequently in working life.
As argued earlier, there is a serious lack of studies that have focused on the distinct contribution of each of the dimensions of the MOW operationalization to the overall construct definition. Often, especially in the period after the original MOW study took place s1987OW, work centrality, work goals and valued working outcomes have been confused and/or considered as the MOW itself, even though it is evident that each dimension concurs in defining the construct. We assume that there is a serious overlap in some of the constructs that previously were taken to be the core elements of the MOW operationalization.
Yet, work centrality, both in an absolute show much work means to meOW and in a rel-ative show much work means to me in relation to other life domainsOW sense, is a basic indicator of the meaning attached to work, which is supposed to strictly relate to the definition of priorities and thus to some specific expected outcomes. Work centrality could be considered as a fundamental cognitive representation of what is important for people in their working life that concretely determines consequent attitudes, choices and behaviours svalued working outcomesOW. This relationship, of course, cannot be
Figure 1: Theoretical model of mediation of Working Goals and Societal Norms between Relative Centrality and Valued Working Outcomes.
Working Goals Social Norms Relative Centrality Valued Working Outcomes c’ a1 a2 b1 b2
Table 3:
Summary of mediation analysis of W
orking Goals and Societal Norms between Relative Centrality and V
alued W orking Outcomes (1000 bootstraps) In de p en de nt va ri abl e M ed iat or D ep en den t va ri abl e Ef fe ct o f I V o n M Ef fe ct o f M o n D V D ir ect e ff ect In d ir ect e ff ect To ta l e ff ec t IV M D V sa1 OW sb1 OW sc ’OW sa1 x b 1 OW sc OW R el at ive ce nt ra lit y So ci et al nor m s Va lu ed w or kin g out co m es 0. 22 sS E = 0 .0 2OW ** 0. 12 sS E = 0 .0 4OW ** 0. 10 sS E = 0. 02 OW* * 0. 03 sS E = 0 .0 2OW ** 0. 13 sS E = 0 .0 2OW ** 95 % C I = 0 .1 7 t o 0 .2 6 95 % C I = 0 .0 5 t o 0 .2 0 95 % C I = 0 .0 5 t o 0 .1 5 95 % C I= 0 .0 1 t o 0 .0 7 95 % C I= 0 .0 9 t o 0 .1 8 sa2 OW sb2 OW sa2 x b 2 OW W or kin g Goa ls 0. 08 sS E = 0 .0 2OW ** 0. 10 sS E = 0 .0 3OW ** 0. 01 sS E = 0 .0 1OW * 95 % C I = 0 .0 3 t o 0 .1 2 95 % C I = 0 .0 3 t o 0 .1 7 95 % C I = – 0. 01 t o 0 .0 2 *p < 0.05, ** p < 0.001.
supposed to happen in a void. Rather, work centrality first develops within the family environment, and is further shaped in someone’s education and personal experience. Subsequently, it is strictly linked to subjective values attached to work and to societal norms about work, that is to the whole of cognitive and normative representations about work people develop in their life course.
Accordingly, an abundant literature on work socialization of youth sWOSY, 1989OW showed that work centrality is the pivot around which young people start to define the meaning and the role work should play in their future life. Work centrality is fun-damental to define their priorities and thus to fix the valued working outcomes that would guide their expectations about work and their future career choices. In line with such assumptions, empirical evidence highlighted that work centrality could influence students’ perceptions of career calling, meant as the approach to work with a sense of purpose and meaning sDik y Duffy, 2009; Duffy y Sedlacek, 2010; Hunter et al., 2010OW.
Accordingly, recent studies confirm that Millennials attribute a less central role to work in their lives, value leisure more and express a weaker work ethic in compar-ison with individuals from previous generations ssevenson, 2010; Twenge, 2010OW. However, Millennials prefer working in positions that might not be well-paid or career-oriented but rather are enjoyable, satisfying and that enable a sound work–life balance sChalofsky y Cavallaro, 2013OW.
In a similar vein, work goals and societal norms about work have shown to play an important role in an individual’s career decision-making process sDuffy, 2007; Duffy y Sedlacek, 2007; Mudrack, 1997OW. Yet, authoritative scholars in the field have demonstrated that most people could see work as a job, focusing on extrinsic needs rather than on pleasure and fulfilment, or as a career, focusing on advancement, or as a calling, focusing on enjoyment of fulfilling, socially useful work sWrzesniewski et al., 1997OW. This distinction is mostly driven by work goals and normative representations of work as a duty rather than as a right, namely by the beliefs people develop about work during their life. Recent empirical evidences have confirmed this trend even with reference to college students, who belong to the generation targeted by this study sHunter, Dik y Banning, 2010; Duffy y Sedlacek, 2010; Adams, 2012OW
Yet, in line with these outcomes from previous empirical work in this field, studies on Millennials confirm that individuals from this generation seek work that is mean-ingful and that solidifies their self-efficacy sDerville Gallicano et al., 2012OW. In absence of these conditions, they rather value extrinsic work values of work se.g. salary, job promotionOW more than intrinsic ones, and consider work to be more of an entitlement rather than an obligation sKowske et al., 2010OW. Millennials are consistently scoring higher on individualistic traits, herewith confirming a popular notion that they might be more self-centred in comparison with their counterparts from previous generations. All in all, the results of the present study, showing a direct relationship between work centrality and valued working outcomes, and a partial mediation effect of work goals and societal norms about work, in the relationship between work centrality among a sample of young students having not yet entered the labour market, allowed us to draw important conclusions both for theory development and vocational practice.
As regards theory development, our findings encourage us to conduct further inves-tigations on the causal relationships linking the MOW core variables, in an attempt to further distinguish the specific contribution of each of the dimensions investigated. More in detail, with special reference to Millennials, the empirical outcomes of this contribution showed that work centrality is a significant predictor of valued working outcomes, and that it plays a crucial role in setting work goals and in influencing the elaboration of the societal norms about work. Therefore, work centrality appears to be the pivot around which young people belonging to this generation develop the mean-ing attached to work and consequently elaborate representations, fix goals and judge expected outcomes.
Accordingly, in line with the main objectives of the study, namely attempting to reformulate the MOW model and to adapt it to young students belonging to the Millennials’ generation, our results suggested a simplification. In practice, most of the core variables contributing to define the MOW model have been individually
investigated in the past as crucial variables accounting for people’s attitude towards work. For instance, the variable work goals actually refer to work values, whereas societal norms could be related to the construct of work ethic. Finally, valued work-ing outcomes could be interpreted as motivations to work. In this vein, certainly there could be an overlap between constructs concurring to accomplish the same aim that is describing the MOW, as showed even within the MOW literature itself sRuiz-Quintanilla y Claes, 2000OW. Therefore, we suggest that when investigating the MOW of young people centrality of work could be used as a primary and unique measure of this construct.
This theoretical speculation is also important for the implementation of vocational guidance practices. As centrality of work was proven to be a key variable in the defi-nition of young people’s working priorities swork goalsOW, normative attitudes ssocietal norms about workOW and expected outcomes of their future work svalued working out-comesOW, then it should be carefully considered in the vocational guidance programmes preparing young people for entry to the labour market. Yet, the contemporary condi-tions of the labour market depicted at the beginning of this paper urges graduates and career starters to develop employability skills useful to adapt to the ever-changing and turbulent contexts of work. In this vein, studies in the field have showed that the meaning of working could highly impact on future ability to ‘craft’ jobs, namely to define and redefine tasks and activities, fostering innovativeness and adaptability sFrese y Fay, ; Wrzesniewski y Dutton, 2001; Grant y Ashforth, ; Berg, Dutton, y Wrzesniewski, OW. Therefore, the meaning of work could be also a crucial variable to enhance young people’s employability.
Accordingly, families and educational agencies shigh school and collegeOW are very powerful vehicles of socialization to work as they could contribute to mould beliefs, values, objectives and representations of both individual priorities about future work-ing situations, and of labour market outlook sHargrove et al., 2002; Hargrove et al., 2005; Stringer y Kerpelman, 2010; Whinston y Keller, 2004OW. Training and vocational guidance programmes experienced during high school and college are needed to help students in better defining their professional project, exploring and preparing their career not only from a practical point of view but also from a psychological perspec-tive, helping them in imaging themselves in future working situations.
Parallel to the above-mentioned practical implications, the results that have emerged from the study might also contribute to inform HRM practices in organizations and, most specifically, their training and development programmes. Indeed, being well- informed about the meaning that this future generation of workers would attach to work, and having more insights into the working outcomes that they value could allow the different stakeholders in working organizations to better define their recruit-ment, selection and retention practices. As a result, they are supposed to be better able to enhance their talent management practices, and, consequently, to reduce their turnover rates. According to the Person/Organization fit paradigm sCable y Judge, 1996; Edwards, 1991; Edwards y Shipp, 2007; Kristof, 1996; O’ Reilly et al., 1991OW and, in particular, following the theory of met expectations sGreenhaus et al., 1983; Irving y Meyer, 1995, 1994 ; Wanous, OW it is argued that in cases where workers’ pre-entry expectations concerning their jobs are confirmed by their actual post-entry experi-ences, the levels of workers’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment will be higher, and, analogously, their levels of voluntary turnover will be lower sRiordan et al., 2001OW. Therefore, from an organizational perspective, studying the meaning of working of future candidates and, subsequently, investigating the construct during job interviews is assumed to be very useful to understand to what extent a certain job candidate and the organization fit to each other in terms of values and organizational behaviours. Similarly, organizations may use this information about newcomers to plan their initial on-the-job training initiatives or to define further professional career growth programmes by carefully aligning these with both individual and organiza-tional expectations.
Moreover, as stated earlier, this study has chosen to focus on the Millennials’ gener-ation because of the growing scientific literature showing the differences between this
particular generation and the previous ones, in terms of both work values, expected working outcomes and person/organization fit sCennamo y Gardner, 2008; Twenge et al., ; Wey Smola y Sutton, 2002OW. Especially, empirical evidence shows that Millennials place relatively more importance on status and freedom work values and tend to report lower person-organization values fit in comparison with previous generations. In line with these results from earlier scholarly work, the present contribution has aimed to add to our knowledge of the distinctive features of this new workforce so that organi-zations can better prepare to enhance their human capital. The present study, however, does have some limitations. Firstly, all data have been collected using questionnaires opening up the possibility of response set consistencies. Secondly, all data have been collected at one point in time, that is, the study is cross sectional. This implies that fur-ther research is needed in order to address the issue of causality. Research using multi-wave designs can provide more specific information about the stability and change of the variables, and about cross-lagged si.e. over timeOW relationships than our cross- sectional approach sDe sange, 2005; Taris y Kompier, 2003OW. Thirdly, further research is needed to investigate the robustness of our findings, and to determine the extent to which our findings generalize to other occupational settings and/or to other countries sFouad y Arbona, 1994OW. Moreover, given the predominantly female sample it could be useful to check for possible gender effects in future approaches. Nevertheless, we think that our results are noteworthy and provide good challenges for future research and cross-validation.
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