Digital Work in a Pre-Digital Organizational Culture

Digital natives constitute the majority of new employees entering the marketplace. However, they face an organizational corporate culture that enshrines the vested interests of a very different generation of people, whom they would characterize as digital immigrants or even dinosaurs. This organizational culture has very strict values and assumptions about the way people (should) work, resulting in considerable tension between the digital natives and their non-native colleagues. We explore these tensions in an exploratory case study of a hotel chain marked by its conservatism in IT policy. After reviewing the literature on digital natives, digital immigrants and organizational culture, we examine how digitally native hotel employees in China secure access to the digital media of their choice in the face of corporate obstruction. We discuss the broader implications of our findings for practicing managers, as well as future research opportunities, before concluding this research-in-progress paper.