Eating Their Young: Understanding Nurses’ Intergenerational Communicative Experiences in the Workplace

• In Event: Health and Organizing: Diagnosing (Un)Healthy Workplaces

Abstract

The demographic landscape of the modern workforce has fundamentally changed as it now contains four distinct generations (Tolbize, 2008; Toosi, 2004, 2012). With that said, intergenerational interactions in the workplace are becoming more common, even though the interlocutors consistently describe communication between age-groups negatively (Coupland, Coupland, Giles, Henwood, & Wieman, 1988; Giles & Gasiorek, 2011). This study, designed to explore intergenerational communication in this increasingly diverse workforce, is informed by Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), Specifically, nurses were interviewed in order to understand how people from three age-groups experience and describe intergenerational communication in healthcare settings. Results show that the nurses characterize colleagues from other age groups negatively and express dissatisfaction and frustration concerning intergenerational interactions. These experiences extend past the over-accommodating, under-accommodating, and avoiding forms of communication detailed by CAT as they maintain and perpetuate a larger narrative in which older nurses “eat their young.” Theoretical and practical implications are developed from the findings and center on ways to perturb the divisive narrative and enhance intergenerational communication in the workplace.

Authors

• Lindsey Anderson, University of Maryland

• Melanie Morgan, Purdue U