From an international comparative point of view the paper deals with driving forces and potential obstacles for the labour market participation of older workers. It goes into depth by focusing on four case studies that seem to be typical for different contexts. Germany, Israel, Italy and Sweden were selected in order to examine the development and the situation of older workers in detail. Each country stands for a specific configuration, e.g. because it may represent a trend reversal, a continuously outstanding performance, or lasting problems. The cases also provde information on pension reforms and approaches to better manage ageing workforces, in some cases including a new balance of work and retirement. Being aware of the different country situations, it becomes obvious that one size of politics does not fit all. Independent of national policies, employability over the life cycle should gain more attention. Regarding future developments, continuous skill improvement and a healthy work environment are indispensable to keep older workers in work.
Taking an international comparative perspective, this paper deals with driving forces of and potential obstacles to the labor market participation of older workers. It focuses in depth on four case studies that appear to be prototypical for different contexts. Given the high variance of cultures of work and welfare state systems in Europe and its neighbouring countries, Germany, Israel, Italy and Sweden were selected with the aim of examining the development and situation of older workers in great detail. Each country stands for a specific configuration, e.g. because it may represent a trend reversal, a continuously outstanding performance or lasting problems. The cases also include information on pension reforms and approaches to better manage aging workforces. In face of the different country situations, it becomes obvious that one size of policies does not fit all. Independent of national policies, employability over the life cycle requires more attention. Regarding future developments, several domains of organizational practices are indispensable for appropriately managing an aging workforce, including skill improvement and a healthy work environment. ; Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich aus einer international vergleichenden Perspektive mit Treibern und Hemmnissen der Arbeitsmarktpartizipation von Älteren. Der Fokus der Studie richtet sich auf Länderbeispiele, die prototypisch für bestimmte Kontexte stehen. Ausgehend von unterschiedlichen Rahmenbedingungen am Arbeitsmarkt und wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Regulierungen in Europa und benachbarten Ländern wurden mit Deutschland, Israel, Italien und Schweden vier Länder ausgewählt, in denen der Entwicklung und Situation älterer Beschäftigter am Arbeitsmarkt nachgegangen wird. Jedes der ausgewählten Länder steht für eine spezifische Konstellation, sei es, dass eine Trendwende erreicht wurde, ein langfristig hoher Beschäftigungsstand realisiert werden konnte oder anhaltende Probleme zu beobachten sind. Die Fallbeispiele befassen sich u.a. mit rentenpolitischen Reformen sowie arbeitsmarktpolitischen Ansätzen zum Management alternder Belegschaften. Sie zeigen, dass es keinen Königsweg zur Verbesserung der Arbeitsmarktsituation Älterer gibt. Unabhängig von staatlichen Politiken kommt der Entwicklung der Beschäftigungsfähigkeit über den Lebenszyklus große Bedeutung bei. Mit Blick auf zukünftige Entwicklungen sind geeignete betriebliche Praktiken für das Management alternder Belegschaften unverzichtbar. Entscheidend sind dabei insbesondere Initiativen, die auf ein lebenslanges Lernen und ein gesundes Arbeitsumfeld zielen.
From an international comparative point of view the paper deals with driving forces and potential obstacles for the labour market participation of older workers. It goes into depth by focusing on four case studies that seem to be typical for different contexts. Germany, Israel, Italy and Sweden were selected in order to examine the development and the situation of older workers in detail. Each country stands for a specific configuration, e.g. because it may represent a trend reversal, a continuously outstanding performance, or lasting problems. The cases also provde information on pension reforms and approaches to better manage ageing workforces, in some cases including a new balance of work and retirement. Being aware of the different country situations, it becomes obvious that one size of politics does not fit all. Independent of national policies, employability over the life cycle should gain more attention. Regarding future developments, continuous skill improvement and a healthy work environment are indispensable to keep older workers in work.
The theoretical literature on organizational culture strongly emphasizes the multifacetedness of the construct. Nevertheless, empirical research has tended to focus on independent culture dimensions rather than applying a holistic perspective that conceives organizational culture as a complex collective. We addressed this issue by investigating configurations of organizational culture using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) within organizational units of two organizations. Across the two samples (1170 employees in 89 work units of a financial service provider and 998 employees in 49 work units of a fashion retailer), results indicated that culture dimensions do not operate in isolation, but jointly work together in achieving different effectiveness outcomes. The results further suggested that several cultural configurations can be equally effective in reaching the same outcome, and that a clan culture is most relevant for achieving low employee turnover, while a market-oriented culture is most relevant for achieving financial effectiveness. With respect to more specific configurations of cultural elements, the results showed some congruencies, but were mixed overall. The discussion focuses on theoretical implications and future directions for applying configurational, set-theoretic approaches to analyzing organizational culture.
Teams with strong faultlines often do not achieve their full potential because their functioning is impaired. We argue that strong diversity beliefs held by team leaders mitigate the negative impact of socio-demographic and experience-based faultlines on team functioning. In a heterogeneous multisource field sample of 217 employees nested in 44 teams and their leaders, we tested our assumptions. Results of a path-analytic model showed that socio-demographic faultlines were negatively related to perceived cohesion and positively related to perceived loafing. The impact of socio-demographic faultlines on team functioning was less detrimental when leaders held strong diversity beliefs. Against our expectations, we found no support for an impact of experience-based faultlines on perceived cohesion or a moderating role of leaders' diversity beliefs in this context. Potential explanations for these results and implications for organizations and team leaders are discussed.
