The cosmopolitan generation and their motivation: a guide for manager to keep motivation

Abstract

This paper is exploring the so-called cosmopolitan generation and intrinsic motivation in order to give managers inspiration and ideas to manage better. Cosmopolitanisation as defined by Beck (2006) is a change process that goes beyond globalisation. A consequence of cosmopolitanism is that everybody is facing the same problems, increasing the ability to put you in the position of somebody else and react to it on the scale of the society. There is a generation of world citizens who are influenced by cosmopolitanisation, called the cosmopolitan generation. It is outlined that intrinsic motivation is much more and very different from mechanistic motivational thinking. Studies during the past five to ten years proves that much of the motivational principles implemented by organisations have a counter effect on intrinsic motivation. The paper is providing five specific ideas for managers in multinational corporations to keep the motivation of the cosmopolitan generation.