World in Brief (09/21/06)

In giving perks, take generation gap into account

By Cindy Krischer Goodman,… In giving perks, take generation gap into account

By Cindy Krischer Goodman, McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — It didn’t take accounting firm owner Richard Berkowitz long to figure out he had a problem relating to his younger workers during tax season.

“When I told them it was mandatory they come in on the weekend, they looked at me like I was out of my mind.”

Berkowitz has discovered what many boomers who lead their companies now face: For most workers in their 20s and 30s, time is currency. And, like most currency, few are willing to give it away.

It’s a complex dynamic playing out in workplaces across the country: A significant number of boomers can’t figure out why younger workers don’t have the pay-your-dues attitude they do. For boomers, success means unrelenting toil and sacrificing family time in order to secure a corner office filled with Lucite plaques. For Generation X, success means balance.

“There’s a lot of frustration in the workplace,” said Cam Marston, a consultant and speaker on multigenerational issues. “Boomers are having a hard time finding their replica in the work force today.”

To motivate younger workers and curb turnover, some managers are rethinking how they communicate with employees. Harmony can be as simple as understanding the generational differences and speaking the right language or using the right rewards.

Marston said older managers — boomers ages 42 to 60 — must use language with younger staffers that acknowledges the value of their time: “I know work isn’t your life, but while you’re here, let’s agree on what you’ll be accountable for.”

To motivate workers found in Generation X (ages 27 to 41), think short-term. Most are not interested in long-term solutions or putting in overtime and waiting for rewards later. Instead of giving them a bonus at the end of the year, Marston said they would prefer this: “You’ve really worked hard this past week. Why don’t you take off half a day on Friday.”

National security issues double-edged for GOP, analysts say

By William L. Watts, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON — If congressional Republicans lose power in this fall’s midterm elections, they won’t be able to say they didn’t see it coming.

In 1994, Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate in dramatic fashion. And while Democrats were expected to lose seats in an off-year election, few prognosticators or party strategists saw the big shift coming well in advance.

Cut to 2006, when the potential for a Democratic surge that could push the GOP back into the minority has been the talk of pollsters, pundits and strategists from both parties.

For Democrats, the 1994 election “was kind of like the Titanic coming up on the iceberg, where they saw it too late,” said political analyst Rhodes Cook, editor of The Rhodes Cook Report, a nonpartisan newsletter.

“If there is an iceberg, here, the Republicans have seen it from miles away. If they run into it, then there’s an inevitability to it, not that they haven’t been warned.”

Prognosticators say it’s still too early to tell if a wave of historical proportions is building, but Democrats come into the 2006 elections with historical trends in their favor.

Since the end of World War II, the party that controls the White House has almost always lost congressional seats in off-year elections. Those losses have been even more pronounced in elections that have taken place during the sixth year of a presidency accompanied by low presidential approval ratings.

Democrats need to make a net gain of 15 seats to take control of the House.

While all 435 House seats are on the ballots, Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, estimates that a total of 56 Republican-held seats are actually in play, compared to just 14 Democratic seats. Sabato estimates Democrats are poised to pick up between 12 and 15 seats in November.

Republicans are better situated to defend the Senate, where Democrats would need to make a net gain of six seats. With 33 seats up for election, Republicans are defending 15 seats, while the Democrats are seeking to hold 18. And the number of competitive races is more even, with eight GOP-held seats and seven Democratic seats seen in play.

MBA students more likely to cheat, survey finds

By Stacey Burling, The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — When it comes to cheating in graduate school, a new study finds that MBA students are the champs.

A survey of 5,331 students at 32 graduate schools in the United States and Canada found an “alarming” amount of cheating across disciplines, but more among the nation’s future business leaders. Fifty-six percent of graduate business students admitted they had cheated at least once in the last year, compared with 47 percent of non-business students.

The students, who were surveyed between 2002 and 2004, told researchers from Pennsylvania State, Rutgers and Washington State universities that the most important reason for cheating was that they thought that other students were doing it.

“People tend to do what they think other people are doing,” said Linda Klebe Trevino, one of the researchers and a professor of organizational behavior at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. “The fact that other people are doing it creates an environment where this is normative.”

The study asked about 13 different types of cheating, ranging from copying a classmate’s test answers to lifting sentences from the Internet without attribution.

The results come amid a growing list of corporate ethics scandals, including faulty accounting to boost earnings, and, more recently, the backdating of stock options grants, a tactic that makes executive pay even more lucrative. While there is no proof that students who would cheat on a test might later cheat stockholders, the researchers said it made sense that people who would bend one rule might bend another.