The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Intergenerational Diversity

Introduction

Technological innovations are constantly on the move, almost everyday society is presented with new software, robot, or some machine that will decrease the production cost of companies or that will helped employees to be more productive (Kambur & Akar, 2022).

In the current context where automation, digitalisation and artificial intelligence are strongly present in organisations, there are some risks that have to be taken into account due to the existing generational diversity. The different traits and characteristics of each generation can lead to conflicts resulting from the difference in values, beliefs, and communication styles. It is important to study the impact of artificial intelligence in the context of generational diversity in the workplace, in order to minimize these risks and conflicts, seeking to leverage the characteristics of each generation.

In the Human Resources Management technology brings a different way to improve the recruitment proceedings or to increase the teamwork effectiveness (Johnson et al., 2020; Kambur & Akar, 2022; Singh et al., 2022). But, Human Resources Management (HRM) relies on human beings with all their emotional complexity, and the relation between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intergenerational diversity is the main subject of this chapter (Arslan et al., 2022). However, the use of personal data by companies lacks effective legislation and it tend to have a misuse concerning boundaries of hierarchical procedures (Budhwar et al., 2022).

Through an overview of literature review regarding articles and HRM studies that provide a more accurate analysis to this multi-thematic subject, this chapter's aim is to help integrate and systematize the complexity of the intergenerational relationship with AI technologies, from the perspective of their labour perceptions.

The use of AI technology as became a mainstream organizational method, but not all generation have the same kind of acceptance (Hornung & Smolnik, 2022), that’s why this overview is extremely important for the Human Resources Management.

The objectives of this chapter rely on:

• O1 – Conceptualize the labour perceptions between intergenerational diversity and AI.

• O2 – Identify the academic and digital skills gap of different types of generations.

• O3 – Systematize the breach of effective legislation on personal data share and use.

This chapter is divided in three main sections such as intergenerational diversity of workers that conceptualized the different generation’s concepts and characteristics and their perceptions accordingly Artificial Intelligence technologies. The second section intended to systematize the fast forward changes that derivate from COVID-19 lockdown measures since 2020 until 2022 around the world based on the breach of effective legislation on personal data share and use. The last section brings the issues regarding the integration between artificial intelligence in the workplace and intergenerational individuals where the gap of digital skills has a tremendous effect.

Methods

The research method of this chapter is based on a qualitative overview of literature review of academic articles, HRM studies and transnational organizations websites.

A comprehensive search was conducted in the dominant databases, namely Scopus, SAGE, Emeralds, Science Direct and EBSCOhost's, following the keywords for article selection presented in Table 1. Studies and reports on this theme developed by private entities were also considered.