Generations and work culture differences: A research on Turkish and foreign instructors

Work culture, which is a combination of individuals' attitudes and behaviors toward work, is a concept shaped by individual, organizational, and societal elements that guide individuals' behaviors in their working lives. Each society's unique cultural, historical, and social structure directly influences its work culture. Therefore, while each society may have its own concept of work culture, work cultures can vary across societies. Apart from cultural differences, another factor influencing the change in work culture is time. Work culture is a concept that evolves with the changing conditions of the world over time. As time progresses, societies change, and different generations enter the workforce, the working styles of institutions and employees also undergo this change. The current study aims to understand and reveal how the work cultures of individuals from different generations and cultures vary. To this end, interviews were conducted with 12 Turkish and 6 foreign instructors belonging to Generation X and Generation Y working at Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University. As a result of evaluating the findings, it was found that the attitudes of participants from different generations and cultures toward work were parallel to their cultural codes and the prominent characteristics of their generation, and that there was an interaction between work attitudes such as the meaning attributed to work, commitment to work, and work discipline, and work behaviors such as performance, organizational citizenship tendency, absenteeism, and tendency to leave the job.