Abstract
This article aims to improve the knowledge on Generation Z as employees within workforce and in the workplace, as well as on the main thematic trends that drive the research on the topic. To this end, and using bibliometric techniques, a sample of 102 publications on this subject from Web of Science between 2009 and 2020 is analyzed. Research discusses the most published and most cited authors and journals to have a broad view of the context of the subject. Later, through a longitudinal view, the study mainly focuses on analyzing the evolution of thematic clusters, to assess the progress of the themes, as well as the network around the principal motor cluster of each period. The obtained results suggest a hardly developed topic, which started to draw attention in 2018, while still having a wide margin for growth. The core of research on the topic has evolved around “Generation-Z” “generations,” “workplace,” “management” and “attitudes,” “leadership,” “career,” or “learning-teaching-education,” although a low keyword stability among periods was noted. There is a need for further development on a variety of aspects regarding this generation and the labor market, as the study shows a clear orientation toward management and generational diversity within the workplace.
Highlights
A second trend can be appreciated since 2018, from which Generation Z (Gen Z) has been gaining relevance in research, as this generation starts working, but begins to have a perfect age for investigators to get an insight about their characteristics, preferences, values, and attitudes
The low number of works on the topic is accompanied by the scarce research on Gen Z and the workforce, as well as the workplace of each author
The difference between the number of keywords between the first and the last periods is relatively low but can be justified by the scarce research on the topic. These results suggest that there is a wide development margin in the literature relating to Gen Z within the workforce and the workplace
Summary
A number of recent studies examine the characteristics of Generation Z (Gen Z) individuals (Gen Zers), their values (Maloni et al, 2019; Cresnar and Nedelko, 2020), their attitudes toward work and organizations (Barhate and Dirani, 2021), the way they adapt to the workplace (Chillakuri, 2020), and even distinguishing intragenerational variants within this cohort (Scholz, 2019; Leslie et al, 2021), as well as its similarities and differences with other generations (Hernaus and Poloski Vokic, 2014; Klopotan et al, 2020; Mahmoud et al, 2021), but mostly with Generation Y (Raslie and Ting, 2021).
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