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Abstract
Research on the effectiveness of age-friendly organizational practices tends to focus on older employees' perceptions of these. Drawing on perceptual congruence and psychological contract theory, we hypothesize that leaders' perceptions of these organizational practices are relevant as well. Specifically, we argue that (dis)agreement between leaders' and older employees' perceptions (i.e., perceptual (in)congruence) of organizational practices related to age-friendly organizational climate, management, and work design plays a role in older employees' well-being. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were applied to a dyadic sample of 484 older employees and their leaders from 100 diverse organizations. Results reveal that leader-employee perceptual congruence on high levels of perceived age-friendly work design was related to higher employee well-being. By contrast, older employees' well-being was lower when leaders evaluated the three age-friendly organizational practices higher than their older employees. Our findings suggest that further theoretical consideration of the role of leader-employee perceptual (in)congruence for aging workforces is needed, and that scholars and organizations should acknowledge the relevance and interplay of different stakeholders' perceptions within an organization.

AbstractResearch on measures for organizational practices targeted toward older employees has grown during the past decade. However, existing measures tend to capture the construct with unidimensional scales, use single-item operationalizations, or focus on specific domains. Thus, the Later Life Workplace Index (LLWI) was developed to serve as a multidimensional framework for measuring organizational practices for the aging workforce. The LLWI covers 9 domains, namely organizational climate, leadership, work design, health management, individual development, knowledge management, transition to retirement, continued employment after retirement, and health and retirement coverage. The index has recently been operationalized and validated in Germany. Given that the quantitative evidence for the framework is limited to Germany so far, we aimed to translate and validate an English version of the LLWI using a sample of older U.S. employees (N = 279). Findings regarding the psychometric properties of the measure are presented, supporting the domain level factor structure through confirmatory factor analyses, but revealing some redundancy among the items for the overall 9 domain factor structure. Multigroup factor analyses comparing the U.S. sample to a German sample (N = 349) further confirmed configural and (partial) metric measurement invariance of the English version of the LLWI. Results also supported convergent and discriminant validity as well as criterion and incremental validity regarding individual level attitudinal, health-related, intention, and behavioral outcomes. Based on these findings, implications for the use of the LLWI in research and practice and future research directions are discussed.