CHANGES IN WORK CULTURE IN ONE-GENERATION COMPANIES IN THE IT SECTOR

The paper refers to changes in attitudes toward work in companies in IT sector, showing how cultural content is reflected in the behavior of the main actors of this part of the labor market. Characteristic features of high-tech enterprises were compared to traditional businesses to show how they have changed. Based on own research (using the descriptive analysis, the causal explanation and the Thurstone scale), possible changes were pointed out as regards employees’ attitudes and attitudes of an organization, both of which affect the new corporate culture.


Introduction
Changes associated with transformation of modern economy affect organizational culture, its concepts and value systems. A progressing diversity of employment contracts and corporate culture of companies can be observed. This paper addresses the DOI: 10.18276/SIP.2017.47/3-21 * E-mail address: grazyna.krzyminiewska@ue.poznan.pl. problem of work in one-generation companies, including mostly enterprises from the high-tech sector. Its purpose is to assess how changes in IT enterprises affect corporate culture and behavior of the main actors of this part of the labor market. The choice of the industry is not accidental: IT companies represent very innovative and age-specific market segment, as generation-wise they constitute a uniform milieu.1 In other words, such companies employ only young people as staff and management board members -employees are at similar age but none of them is forty years old. This phenomenon is extremely interesting for several reasons. First, it is a question of performing business tasks without the participation of all generations, which is, in itself, a relatively new phenomenon. Second, functioning in the peer group does not create the ground for intergenerational communication, which is natural for traditional enterprises and takes place only when dealing with stakeholders. Third, organizational work in these enterprises is different, more often focused on the harmony with young generation's lifestyle.

Studia i Prace WNEIZ US
The following questions were asked: 1. What characteristic features of high-tech enterprises have changed compared to traditional businesses? 2. How do high-tech enterprises affect new corporate culture? The following techniques were used herein: the descriptive analysis, the causal explanation (to address the problem) and the Thurstone scale (to describe attitudes towards work, which form a part of organizational culture of IT enterprises).

Work culture in the context of prefigurative culture
The discourse on human work conducted on the grounds of many fields of science shows that, in every society, work affecting the existence of individuals and social groups must be anchored in the system of values to be considered necessary and become more than just a means to acquire material goods. According to social constructivism, what matters are the beliefs established within some social, cultural, economic system (Kozek, 2004 p. 178). It also means a deep conviction about the need to legitimize work, which historically speaking resulted in many ideologies of work, myths, religious ideas about the meaning of work and cultural pressures on its performance. This problem is presented differently across some scientific fields and disciplines and it is linked with different concepts of man such as homo economicus, sociologicus homo, homo hubris (and others).
The key to explain the attitudes of individuals and communities towards work is to capture the factors that shape the system of values, beliefs about the world, personal efficacy and willingness to produce designated levels of performance -these ultimately translate into the attitude towards work (Krzyminiewska, 2015). In this context, work culture is manifested by practical appliance of socially recognized values and standards on every day basis. Work is still characterized by "continuity and change", which means maintaining, cultivating and developing culture, according to the occurrence of changes in social environment and in the sphere of values, beliefs and views. In today's modern world, everything is characterized by the rapid pace of change, unusual for earlier eras. This pace has contributed to the emergence of ever-growing cultural differences between generations. "In today's society, where changes in the standard of living occur faster than usual, the generation of children is born in the entirely different culture than the culture their parents were brought up in" (Sztompka, 2012 pp. 236-237). For modern world, prefigurative nature of the culture content becomes increasingly characteristic (Mead, 1978). In prefigurative culture, bonds with tradition and the past are broken off, and the goal is to look for new ways based on the assumption that old solutions have become useless. Thus, an intergenerational transmission of cultural patterns is interrupted. Undoubtedly, IT companies, which are the subject of this paper, have a number features typical of prefigurative culture.

Changes in characteristic features of work: from traditional enterprise to ITC sector
Changes occurring in work culture justify the need for its redefinition when traditional enterprise is compared to IT company. Table 1 depicts such a comparison of selected characteristics of work in traditional enterprise versus high-tech company. This comparison clearly shows that these changes are in fact considerable. labor market local, regional, supraregional market deregulated, supra-regional, individualized with high volatility, individually negotiated employment contracts employment contract of employment It is claimed herein that changes in work culture result not only from countries throughout the world moving toward knowledge-based economy, but also from the fact that the knowledge economy is one-generation; hence, it is worth paying attention to some of these changes. High-tech employees are often given greater scheduling freedom in how they fulfill the obligations of their positions; flexible working arrangement could affect a decision which job offer to accept, as working fixed hours might be difficult for young people used to manage their time on their own (e.g. in college). The attractiveness of flexible working hours requires self-discipline because the anticipated effects of work are set up very high. Outcome orientation is related not only to business process re-engineering, but most of all to individualism, typical of attitudes in the information society. The issue related to career paths and ladders that develop without borders is, certainly, not without significance. Employee's career develops as they take up jobs with and for different employers, thereby creating their employment portfolio, which enhances their career choices. Working in IT companies is attractive because employers allow or encourage employees to participate in organizational decision-making process. Participative decision-making corresponds to the individualism of young people who greatly value subjectivity and personal efficacy. There is another point of immense importance to be made here, namely a phenomenon referred to in literature as calculative type of involvement in the organization. It is characterized by rational assessment of tangible and intangible job benefits compared to the effort employees put into their work. If they find such job benefits insufficient, their decision to change a job has nothing to do with loyalty to colleagues or employers, and high market demand for technical skills allows such employees to pick and choose where they will work and for whom.

Work culture in one-generation IT companies
The reference to prefigurative culture seems to be justified when we consider enterprises engaged in software, telecommunications and IT services, where average age of employees is less than 40.
Of course, not all companies of this industry are so young in terms of employees' age (including Polish companies and enterprises operating on the so-called emerging markets), but many of them fulfill this criterion, especially when it comes to software developers. At this point, it would be worth to refer to a survey covering 55,338 responses (Developer Survey Results, 2016), which clearly shows that the average software developer is 29.6 years old and the median is 27. The average software developer in India is 6 years younger than the average developer in the United States, while in Poland the average age of high-tech employees is 26.7 (among countries with more than 1,000 responses). This raises a legitimate question, namely: does one-generation nature of some companies significantly modify their organizational culture?
This paper presents a piece of empirical research conducted in IT enterprises that have an established market position. It was conducted and developed in March 2017 and it is only one of the elements of wider research. However, research referred to herein was based only on the results obtained with the use of the Thurstone scale,2 which allows researchers to pre-evaluate attitudes towards work (based on its behavioral, emotional and cognitive factor), which made up company culture. This is an introduction to further research on this phenomenon, as the Thurstone scale is only a tool based on which further research techniques can be developed. Evaluation provided by judges concerned attitudes towards some characteristic features broken down into employee's and organization's attitudes toward employee's work. In table 2 there are presented the results obtained, based on the evaluation provided by twelve competent judges, who have considerable knowledge of the subject in question. In this case, these were people who worked in at least two IT companies, but did not hold managerial positions. Source: own elaboration.
Considering the above, it can be concluded that: 1. Employees enjoy a very high level of autonomy in the decision-making process, they subjectively participate in solving problems (performing tasks) because relationships between superiors and employees, and between team members are based on mutual trust and partnership. 2. Employees have a strong sense of responsibility for the performance of tasks, they are self-directed and self-motivated because of strict rules of promotion and career path. 3. Employees feel fairly treated by others and have a sense of security because they know mistakes are, to some extent, unavoidable and when they happen, employees have a chance to learn from them, make repairs and avoid repetition. 4. Judges were most unanimous in their opinion about social events and dress code: these elements of organizational culture fulfill young people's needs to develop social bonds and create their own unrestricted image the most. The survey indicates these areas of attitudes towards work for which the required level of judges' compliance was not reached. Therefore, it can be concluded that: 1. Statements indicating the possibility of interference in intergenerational communication were rejected. 2. The asymmetry of knowledge in the field of IT does not make client communication more difficult.

Conclusion
The analysis shows -above all else -the necessity to adjust the assumptions at next stages of research, primarily because we are faced with the need to verify what we think about companies hiring mostly young people (they are usually believed to perform their tasks in a coldly calculated manner and to be less inclined to identify themselves with their companies). First, the thesis about employees having difficulty dealing with stakeholders because of differences in beliefs, knowledge, attitudes existing between them and older people was disproved. It is also necessary to increase the volume of research by these aspects which show the consequences of a given phenomenon both for individuals and the labor market. This will help to more adequately answer the question about changes occurring in organizational work in one-generation IT enterprises.