Our analysis challenges the notion of today's younger workers as more ‘entitled’ than previous generations. We use data from a study of young adults leaving university in the UK, inspired by Sue's work. We consider two divergent bodies of literature on the sense of entitlement in relation to generational differences at work – a managerialist approach, which conceptualises sense of entitlement to work–life balance as a negative trait, and a second body, based on the seminal work by Sue Lewis and colleagues, that treats sense of entitlement as a situated process rather than an internal characteristic. In this paper, we argue that this mainstream view of the sense of entitlement as a concept is problematic and requires a more critical examination. Much has been made in the media and popular practitioner literature about how the latest generation of workers have a ‘sense of entitlement’ and therefore expect more from the workplace than previous generations. Specifically, we locate this study within the literature of the work values and expectations of the ‘Millennial generation’, also known as ‘GenMe’. This paper contributes to debates in the broad area of generational differences at work. The reconstructed meaning of WLB raises concerns about its continued relevance to its original espoused purpose.
Despite a discourse of mutual benefits to employee and employer underpinning all three discourses, there is a distinct shift towards greater emphasis on economic rather than institutional interests of employers during austerity, accompanied by discursive processes of fixing, stretching, shrinking and bending understandings of WLB. Three main discourses were identified: WLB practices as organizationally embedded amid financial pressures WLB practices as a strategy for managing financial pressures and WLB as a personal responsibility. This article draws on in-depth interviews with senior human resources professionals in British public sector organizations to examine shifting discourses of WLB in an austerity context. However, discourses of WLB can be sensitive to changing economic contexts. The relative importance of economic and other motives for employers to provide support for work–life balance (WLB) is debated within different literatures. Further exploration of this model using psychometric techniques is proposed. This qualitative study develops a complex model of a newly identified set of factors, which may be relevant for other Arabic cultural settings. The present study explores these issues using the methodology of critical realism in companies in the telecommunications sector of Palestine. WLB programs in developed countries often reflect the ethos of particular cultures, and Western models may not be wholly relevant for cross-cultural comparison. Work–life balance (WLB) programs to address these issues have emerged in Western countries in the past three decades and have been evaluated in various ways in multidisciplinary studies which have employed sociological and psychological methodologies. For corporations, stressed employees are also a problem. These role conflicts may result in significant psychological stress for individuals. Finding a balance between the demands of the role requirements of work, family, and social life is a challenging problem for modern society and is particularly relevant for the growth of women’s participation in the workforce.
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