SummaryAs we enter the new millennium and face the entrance of another generation of workers into the changing world of work, managers are encouraged to deal with the generational differences that appear to exist among workers. This paper revisits the issue of generational differences and the causes of those differences. Data were obtained from more than 350 individuals across the country who responded to a request to complete a survey. Current generational differences in worker values are analysed and the results are compared to a similar study conducted in 1974. Results suggest that generational work values do differ. To a lesser degree, the results suggest that work values also change as workers grow older. Finally, the results indicate an increasing desire among American workers to balance work and personal goals. This change in attitude was reflected even within the same cohort group.

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PurposeThe paper seeks to address the lack of empirical research on servant leadership by investigating relationships between servant leadership and four individual differences – values of empathy, integrity, and competence and the five‐factor model's personality factor of agreeableness.Design/methodology/approachDennis and Winston's servant leadership scale (a revision of Page and Wong's servant leadership instrument), Braithwaite and Law's Goal and Mode Values Inventories, Mayer and Davis' integrity scale, and Costa and McCrae's NEO Five‐Factor Inventory were used with 288 followers and 126 leaders in three organizations in order to measure relationships between followers' ratings of leaders' servant leadership, followers' ratings of leaders' values of empathy, integrity, and competence and leaders' ratings of their own agreeableness.FindingsFollowers' ratings of leaders' servant leadership were positively related to followers' ratings of leaders' values of empathy, integrity, and competence. Followers' ratings of leaders' servant leadership were also positively related to leaders' ratings of their own agreeableness.Research limitations/implicationsCommon method bias is a potential limitation due to respondents' tendency toward consistency in responses.Practical implicationsOrganizations embracing servant leadership may benefit from selecting leaders partly on the basis of certain personal attributes such as those investigated in the present study. Furthermore, in order to maintain a servant leadership culture and to retain leaders in a servant leadership organization, recruiters and trainers in servant leadership organizations would likely benefit from communicating accurate information about attributes valued in a servant leadership culture – e.g. attributes explored in the present research.Originality/valueThe study extends our understanding of servant leadership research by offering support for individual attributes related to the practice of servant leadership.

The extent to which the Pygmalion effect occurs in a work organization was investigated. In this study, which took place over a 3-month period in a retail setting, the relationship between a supervisor's expectations of a subordinate and the resulting performance of the subordinate was investigated. Ss included newly hired sales associates and their first-level sales managers. The results revealed little evidence of the Pygmalion effect in the overall sample. However, the results indicate that the Pygmalion effect may have been more operative among men than among women. Although previous research has provided ample evidence of the Pygmalion effect in educational and military settings, this study's lack of significant findings suggests that the process through which supervisory expectations are translated into changes in subordinate behavior is considerably more complex than has been commonly believed. Research on the Pygmalion EffectThe Pygmalion Effect in Education Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) are often credited with initiating the interest of researchers in the interpersonal aspects of the Pygmalion effect. In their now-classic study, the researchers informed elementary school teachers that tests had identified

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