Generational Influence, Intergenerational Equity, and Modern Transformational Leadership: Designing Inclusive Knowledge Systems in Industrial Workplaces
摘要
As industrial organizations across Europe confront the dual pressures of demographic aging and rapid digitalization, human resource management (HRM) is challenged not only to preserve knowledge but to design inclusive infrastructures for modern transformational leadership. This chapter situates intergenerational knowledge systems as arenas where power, identity, and legitimacy are continuously negotiated. It examines how practices such as mentoring, reverse mentoring, and communities of practice (CoPs) operate as vehicles of relational intelligence, coalition-building, political skill, and inclusion in age-diverse workplaces. Drawing on empirical insights from the Styrian industrial sector, the chapter highlights both the risks of symbolic or tokenistic approaches and the opportunities for justice-oriented leadership that redistributes influence across generations. By linking HRM interventions—such as age-neutral recruiting, equitable training access, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices—to the values of ethical presence and cultural fluency, the analysis underscores how knowledge preservation becomes knowledge co-creation. Taken together, intergenerational equity is reframed not merely as a demographic imperative but as a strategic infrastructure for transformational leadership in fractured organizational and societal contexts.