Generational theory states that people born at a similar time frame in history would experience similar political, social and economic realities. The theory looks for significant historical events and identifies the impact these have on existing social order and value systems. Workforce transformation evolves significantly from era-to-era and from nation-to-nation. Presently, there are three major workforce generational cohort groups: Baby boomers, Gen. X, and Gen. Y that were taken directly from the Western generational theory and widely used across the globe. In consideration for a country such as Malaysia, the identifiable generation cohort groups may be misguided as life events vary across country to country. The example of naming of the terms baby boomers referred to the booming of births in the Western world whereas in Malaysia for that same time period it is impossible to observe a similar boom. This conceptual study attempts to shield light of the demographic reality in Malaysia. The aim of this paper is to show the formulation of labels reflecting the actual generational gaps based on Malaysian socio-economic and demographic transitions over the past 70 years period (from 1940s to present time). The authors of the study have defined and labelled the generations as the seekers (pencari) , the builders (pembina), the developers (pemaju) and the Generations Z (Generasi Z) arising from the workforce transformation and historical facts.
Armstrong-Statssen, M., & Templer, A. (2005). Adapting training for older employees: Canadian response to an aging workforce, Journal of Management Development, 24 (1), 57-67.
Ariff, M. (1991). Managing Trade and Industry Reforms in Malaysia’, in Ostry, S. (Ed), Authority and
Academic Scribblers: The Role of Research in East Asian Policy Reform, California. ICS Pres.
Arshad, F., Abdullah, N.M., Kaur, B., & Abdullah, A.M (2007). 50 years of Malaysian Agriculture: Transformational Issues, Challenges and Direction, Serdang. UPM Press.
Beekman, T. (Sept 2011). Fill in the generation gap. Strategic Finance. 15 – 17.
Codrington, G. (2011). Detailed introduction to generational theory in Asia. Tomorrow Today, Retrieved from http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/pdf/TomorrowToday_Generations_in_Asia.pdf
Chong, T. (2005). Modernisation Trends in Southeast Asia, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Singapore
Chong, D. (2013). First-time voters a toss-up for Election 2013, The Malaysian Insider. Retrieved from http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/first-time-voters-a-toss-up-for-election-2013-survey-shows
Comeau, J., & Tung, L. (2013).Re-defining the Concepts of Generational Labelling: Perspective from Malaysia. ARPN Journal of Science and Technology, 3 (3) 259 – 276.
Department of Statistics Malaysia (n.d). Population distribution and basic demographic characteristic report 20120. Retrieved from http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/index.php?option=com_content&id=1215
Demographic transition (n.d.) In Wikipedia, Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
EH.net (2010). Economic history of Malaysia. Retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/drabble.malaysia
Index Mundi - Country Facts. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.indexmundi.com
Malaysia Investment Development Authority (2014). Invest in Malaysia. Retrieved from http://www.mida.gov.my/env3/index.php?page=services-sector
Martin, N. & Prince, D. (2008). Factoring for X: An empirical study of Generation X’s materialistic attributes. Journal of Management and Marketing Research, 1, 65 – 78.
Ng, R. (2011). Closing the gender gap. Retrieved from http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/management/195658-closing-the-gender-gap.html
PopulationPyramid.net (n.d.). Retrieved from http://populationpyramid.net/
Roslan, A. (2012). Income Inequality, Poverty and Development Policy in Malaysia. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.196.3596&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Soong, K. K. (2011). Patriots & Pretenders. Petaling Jaya: Suaram.
Stanat, M. (2005). China’s Generation Y: Understanding the Future Leaders of the World’s Next Superpower. New York, NY: Homa & Sekey.
Strauss, W. & Howe, N. (1992). Generations: The History of Americas Future, 1584 to 2069. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company.
Sukirno, A. (2004). Growth and transformation of the Malaysian Economy. Retrieved from http:// www.ekonomikerakyatan.ugm.ac.id/My%20Web/sembul20_1.htm
Tan, Peter K. W. (2005). The medium-of-instruction debate in Malaysia: English as a Malaysian language? Problems & Language Planning, 29(1), 47–66.
Tey, N. P. (2007). The Family planning Program in Peninsular Malaysia. The Global Family Planning Revolution, 257-276.
The Times (2014). Malaysia Workforce. Retrieved from http://bcg.thetimes.co.uk/Asia/Malaysia
Trading Economics (2014). Unemployment rate – Country – list. Retrieved from http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/unemployment-rate
United Nations (2012). Department of Economic and social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects, 2012 revision. Retrieved from http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/CD-ROM/Urban-Rural-Population.htm
United Nations Country Team – Malaysia (2011). The Millennium Development Goals at 2010. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org.my/files/editor_files/files/Malaysia%20MDGs%20report%20clean%200419.pdf
Wikipedia (2014). Malayan Emergency. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency
World Bank (2014). The World Bank Group Search. Retrieved from http://search.worldbank.org/data?qterm=malaysia%20urban%20population&language=EN
Young, K. (2013). It’s time to rise to the challenge of an aging workforce: Training can make older worker into valuable and loyal employees, Human Resource Management International Digest, 21(7), 27-29.
Copyright: © 2014 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
