Leading Multigenerational Adaptation to Change: Cross-Industry and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Leadership and Change Receptivity

Organizations today operate within a landscape marked by rapid technological advancements, globalization, and complex shifts in workforce demographics. Central to these challenges is the necessity to understand and manage adaptation to change across multiple generations, including Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Each generation possesses distinct values, communication preferences, and expectations that influence their approach to change and innovation. Moreover, these generational dynamics are further complicated by industry-specific demands and varying cultural norms worldwide, amplifying the complexity of change management and presenting critical questions about how leaders can foster inclusivity and resilience during organizational transformation. Recent research highlights the importance of adaptive leadership, psychological safety, and digital communication in bridging intergenerational divides, with notable efforts to map generational traits and examine cross-sector adaptation. While these advances offer valuable insights, there remain significant gaps in understanding how leadership strategies can be tailored effectively within diverse cultural and industrial settings, and how generational collaboration can be harnessed to improve change receptivity and drive sustainable outcomes.

This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of how leadership, change receptivity, and cultural intelligence intersect to shape successful multigenerational adaptation in organizations across various industries and countries. The objective is to identify both facilitating and hindering factors influencing generational engagement, resistance, and innovation, alongside leadership approaches that enable inclusive and context-sensitive transformation. By capturing and comparing adaptation patterns across cohorts, industries, and cultural environments, the research seeks to provide a comprehensive framework for practitioners and scholars. Key questions include: What leadership strategies best promote openness and resilience among diverse generations? How do cultural and industry-specific norms mediate receptivity to change? And what practices empower organizations to thrive amid ongoing disruption?

The scope of this Research Topic encompasses multigenerational adaptation to organizational change, with attention to cross-industry and cross-cultural perspectives. Research is welcome from a variety of methodological angles and professional contexts, with an emphasis on practical and theoretical contributions. To gather further insights in these areas, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Generational differences in change adaptation and resistance
• Leadership strategies for managing multigenerational teams
• The impact of cultural norms on change receptivity
• Cross-industry case studies of organizational transformation
• Psychological safety and trust in multigenerational environments
• Communication styles and digital tools in facilitating change
• Innovative approaches to cross-cultural and generational collaboration

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Multigenerational workforce, Generational differences, Change management, Adaptive leadership, Change receptivity, Organizational transformation, Resistance to change, Intergenerational collaboration, Psychological safety, Communication styles

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.