Question

Weber coined the term Protestant Work Ethic and defined proper workplace behavior as working for more than the benefit of oneself; or working just for profit. A characteristic of the protestant work ethic is wealth creation based on increased productivity and better use of resources. Do you think there are generational differences between why baby-boomers work and today’s millennial's (Gen-Y)?  Discuss your perceptions.

Answer 1

                        The Protestant work ethic as defined by Weber states the proper workplace behaviour of an individual. He states that the workplace behaviour and the wealth creation should be based on increasing the productivity of an individual and better use of the available resources rather than working for the individual benefit. Thus, he states the productivity based on collective efforts to attain them. In the book and essay, he states that it is this phenomenon and ethic that created the concept and working of the ‘Capitalism’ in the world today that has a focus on increased productivity and efficiency in a firm.

                        The baby boomers refer to the almost 76 million people who were born between 1946 and 1964. They were born during the baby boom in the post-World War II era. The Generation Y refer to those generation who were born in the 1980’s and 1990’s and are more familiar to the new technologies than the baby boomers. Based on the generational gap between the two population and the concept of this Protestant work ethic, the following are the ways how the difference would occur between the two population generations.

· The baby boomers were born in such an era that was less exposed to the technological innovation as if today and thus their working environment had to focus on much more human effort than that of today.

· On analysis, it can be seen that the baby boomers had worked better for the betterment of the existing society when compared to the Gen Y who are more concentrated on self interest which goes against the Protestant work ethic.

· Since the Gen Y workers have more technology aid, the efficiency of the production would be much better than the older era production methodologies, but the human work in the same has been drastically reduced as much of the production methods have been replaced by the machines.

· The overemphasis on technology has made profit as the sole motto as if in a capitalist society, but the impact on human values of production has reduced.

· The baby boomers always urge for more as more human effort were the need of the hour and that created the surge in the technological development of the era.

· Online marketing has been a major feature today to which the Gen Y are much accustomed to than the baby boomers.

Thus, on the analysis of the difference in the work culture and the working atmosphere of both the generation of people, we can see that there are differences in the working environment and thus the work culture has been affected due to this. The overemphasis on technology has been a major characteristic of the Gen Y production methods and thus it has created a difference in the approach of production methods in the industry.