Generational Differences in Human and Work Values in Iran and Poland

Globalization blurring the world's cultural diversity and an aging workforce can make the challenge of working in multicultural and multigenerational teams commonplace. The main objective of this empirical doctoral dissertation was to deepen Human Resource Management (HRM) knowledge about generational differences in Poland and Iran, which could help build multigenerational Polish-Iranian teams. The specific objective was the execution of five research tasks. The generational theory posits intra-societal shifts in values and attitudes across individual members from differing age cohorts1. The generational literature review identified one common formation experience for Poland and Iran: the Internet spread broke the generational dependence. Millennials are the first generation socialized in the Internet age, which does not need "parents" to access information, so instead of asking more experienced coworkers, they rely on Internet "wisdom." The doctoral dissertation is not a sociological work, although it uses well-financed big international data collected by sociologists with strong methodological concerns and expertise. Among three surveys in which both countries participated, only World Value Survey made raw data available to the scientific community; therefore, World Value Survey was used to test the theoretical model on Polish and Iranian nationally representative samples in 2005 and 20202. Differences in "human values" focused on proself individualistic and prosocial collectivistic orientations were operationalized by responses to Schwartz's Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). "Work values" and post-materialistic values acceptance were operationalized by responses to the World Value Survey questions. As the World Value Survey did not include questions on human values in 2020, research was conducted in Iran (October 2019 and January 2020), in which a total of 71 families (238 students/graduated children and their parents) completed the PVQ questionnaire. Additionally, 57 families (n=125) took part in the new form of structured interviews focused on situational dilemmas presented to respondents. Comparing generations within the same family enabled us to control the impact of socioeconomic differences. The strongest empirical finding was the generational shift towards individualistic proself human values, which was replicated on three data sets. The qualitative study confirms the quantitative relationships; older Iranians are more collectivist prosocial oriented (especially in conformity and tradition) than younger generations, who are more individualistic. To summarize, using triangulation of data, operationalizations, and methods, a generational shift towards proself individualistic values in both countries was shown. The generational differences in work attitudes turned out to be much weaker. The analyses of post-materialistic values acceptance showed a strong period effect, but neither age nor generational (birth-cohort) effect. The implication of the empirical finding for HRM is also discussed.