Making the Public Service Millennial: Generational Diversity in Public Service

Examines how the new wave of Generation Y public service employees are affecting the dynamics of continuity and change in public management ethics.

Making the Public Service Millennial explores how a new generation of public service employees affects the dynamics of continuity and change in public management and ethics. The book begins with the premise that Generation Y poses new challenges for public management, which will lead to changes in work-related values, rules, structures, and behaviors in the public service system. Will the soon-future leaders of today's public organizations pose new challenges for public management? How will this cohort cope with ethically-questionable behaviors? Given these questions, the potential strategic value of an empirical, cohort-based approach to ethical decision-making in the public service suggests interesting managerial implications for the effective incorporation of ethics into the management of public organizations. With implications for many types of organizations, and particularly for public sector organizations in democratic societies, managers across organizations should view generational differences not merely as a demographic variable, but as manifestations of broader social trends that may undermine established public management practices and organizational climates.