Percepção sobre carreiras inteligentes: diferenças entre as gerações y, x e baby boomers

Abstract

The organizations nowadays face the challenge of dealing with heterogeneous groups, which are formed due to diverse characteristics of active people in the labor market. One of these diversities is used to be the age, that generates peculiar behaviors in each age group. This paper aims at making a descriptive analysis about the perception of Y, X generations and baby boomers on the competences of intelligent careers – knowing‐how, knowing‐why and knowing‐whom. We did this analysis from an organizational climate survey applied in 2007, with 491 companies operating in Brazil, involving 143,445 respondents. The results show the differences of perception among the groups we studied, accordingly to the descriptions we found on the literature about the professional behavior of people who were born in different periods, that dealt with different realities in the labor world. We observed that the most mature people (baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964) perceive more positively the three groups of competences, mainly the knowing‐why group, connected to the work meaning. We also show that there are some specificities between Y and X generations as, for example, the youngest (Y generation, born from 1978) believe more strongly that they will have opportunities to make a career and grow at the company where they work at.