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AbstractFriendship may help to bridge differences between people, such as between age-diverse employees. Oftentimes, age diversity in employee interactions cultivates interpersonal tensions. Age-diverse workplace friendship—a relationship between coworkers of different ages, who like each other and who are engaged in a balanced social exchange—may help to overcome these interpersonal tensions because having something in common can de-escalate age-related difficulties and reduce negative feelings between diverse individuals. Despite the relevance of the topic, literature focusing on age-diverse workplace friendship is rare. To address this gap and direct future research, we aim to integrate research on related topics such as workplace friendship and (age) diversity at work into a systematic literature review. Concentrating primarily on the formation and maintenance of age-diverse workplace friendship, we identified similarity-attraction theory, social identity theory, and socioemotional selectivity theory as the three dominant theories referenced in the literature and utilize them to embed and connect our findings into existing theory. More specifically, we review and summarize the findings of our systematic literature review into an integrated framework depicting the antecedents, formation and maintenance processes, and outcomes of age-diverse workplace friendship. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and point out directions for future research.

AbstractKnowledge transfer between younger and older employees can help to prevent organizational knowledge loss and contribute to business success. However, despite its potential benefits, knowledge transfer does not occur automatically. To better understand the challenges associated with age-diverse knowledge transfer, we develop a conceptual model outlining 10 propositions. Specifically, we adopt a temporal social comparison perspective suggesting that employees compare their current and future status (i.e., the prestige, respect, and esteem provided by others). Expected future status differences are meaningful among age-diverse employees because older employees may have a higher current status than their younger colleagues, whereas younger employees may gain a higher status in the future. In our conceptual model, we propose 2 opposing pathways through which temporal social comparison impacts knowledge transfer, namely age-specific motives (i.e., generativity and development striving) and discrete emotions (i.e., fear of losing status and fear of losing face). In addition, we introduce individual and organizational boundary conditions that can modify the downstream consequences of temporal social comparison on knowledge transfer between younger and older employees.

AbstractWhile literature about the relationship between well-being and accomplishment exists, previous studies were mainly quantitative and neglected the subjective experience of female retirees, which the current study aimed to address. Three female retired charity CEOs based in the United Kingdom were interviewed using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded 3 themes: (1) "accomplishment and well-being—a potentially negative interaction," (2) "accomplishment and well-being—a positive link through interaction with other well-being domains," and (3) "retirement—a moderator for negative direct impacts." The results provided a complex picture of how high-achieving women postretirement perceived accomplishment as a contributor to their well-being. By highlighting an intricate link between accomplishment and other domains of well-being, particularly positive relationships, the findings critique that positive psychology overemphasizes the individual and highlight the need for further research into the interaction between different domains of well-being. The study also contributes to the debate about the relationship between age and well-being by illuminating the individuality of the experience depending on circumstances and environment. Finally, discussed are the implications of the current study in the context of retired high-fliers.

AbstractVirtual interviews have become ubiquitous, yet research on the psychological effects of their technological characteristics remains sparse. Many practitioners caution that malfunctions that commonly occur during interviews may negatively influence interviewers' perceptions of an applicant. This concern is heightened for some groups of applicants, particularly those of certain age groups. Age stereotypes characterize older adults as technologically inept, and per the similarity effect, the dual ages of an applicant and an interviewer likely influence an interviewer's attributions of a technology malfunction. We explored these propositions by investigating the effects that one such malfunction, an echo, has on raters. This experiment used a 2 (younger applicant vs. older applicant) × 2 (younger rater vs. older rater) × 3 (no echo vs. minor echo vs. severe echo) between-subject design to test hypotheses. Results showed that raters generally made situational attributions of malfunctions. Raters blamed the echo on older applicants slightly more than younger applicants, but attributions did not predict perceptions of interview performance, decisions to hire, or salary recommendations. Malfunctions and age similarity were generally not related to hiring outcomes. These findings advance theories surrounding attributions and age biases while offering no clear evidence that specific age groups are at a disadvantage in virtual interviews.

Abstract
Older workers are increasingly being encouraged to work beyond normal retirement age (NRA). Given that employers generally control opportunities for employees to work beyond NRA, better understanding their motivations, attitudes, and experiences in (re)hiring employees to work beyond NRA is vital. To date, however, research investigating employment beyond NRA has primarily focused on the perspective and experiences of employees. In this study, we analyzed data from a 2017 survey of 1,214 Dutch employers to examine whether workplace social norms, employers' concerns related to workforce aging, and structural organizational characteristics were related to whether or not they employed working retirees. We found that workplace norms about working beyond NRA, concerns about career opportunities for younger workers, and structural characteristics such as organizational size, sector, and proportion of female and older workers in the organization were significantly associated with whether or not organizations employed workers beyond NRA. In the second, exploratory, phase of our analysis, we investigated attitudes and approaches toward workers beyond NRA among those who had previously employed such workers. Most employers agree that they mainly (re)hire workers with unique knowledge or experience to work beyond NRA and that employees usually take the initiative in prolonging employment. Employers' opinions on whether employees working beyond NRA should accept a pay cut or block the progress of other employees are more mixed. Insights gained from the current research can help guide future research and policy to support longer working lives, from both employee and employer perspectives, even beyond normal retirement age.

This study investigated the relationship between measures of college education and work performance for a cohort of 84 police officers over a 10-year period. College education variables showed a statistically significant relationship with promotions (average r = .31), and supervisory ratings of job knowledge (average r = .25). However, there was an inconsistent relationship with measures of disciplinary action. These patterns of relationships may indicate that college education is relevant to many aspects of police work but should not be assumed to predict all areas of job performance.

AbstractAdopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this article reports new evidence on the impact of age and experience on work unit performance. Two types of experience that increase with age are "general" and "firm-specific." The focus here is on the influence of general human capital (which increases with time spent in the workforce) and firm-specific human capital (which increases with tenure with the current employer) on work unit performance. Although age–performance relationships have been investigated extensively in two research literatures, psychology and economics, neither addresses such relationships at the unit-within-organization level of analysis, concentrating instead on age–performance relationships at individual, organizational, or national levels. Using a unique data set comprised of large-sample, long-duration, multivariate studies of unit performance within firms this meta-analysis synthesizes partial effect sizes for the effects of age and tenure. A key finding is that tenure positively affects unit performance whereas age has no effect. Work unit leaders' tenure but not age was found to positively affect unit performance. The lack of evidence of an age–performance relationship is consistent with psychological research at the individual level but contravenes economics research literature which, at all levels of analysis, generally reports negative relationships between age and performance. Neither the heterogeneity of tenure nor age was related to performance nor was there evidence of nonlinearities in relationships. Practical implications of the findings are discussed regarding ageism and employers' use of gig or contract workers. Implications for future research and theory focus on interdisciplinary theory development and the scientific contribution of organizationally based research.

AbstractJob crafting has often been conceptualized as a higher-order construct composed of 3 dimensions: seeking resources, seeking challenges, and reducing demands. However, recent advances in job crafting studies have questioned the composition of its multidimensional structure. Furthermore, job crafting has been widely studied in age-diverse samples of workers, but not properly studied among older workers. In this article, we investigate the multidimensional structure of job crafting in 2 samples of older workers with a managerial role. In Study 1, in a cross-sectional sample (1,020 school superintendents, Mage = 57.27, SDage = 5.15) using a series of competing factorial analytic models (CFA, ESEM, bifactor-CFA, bifactor-ESEM), we demonstrated that reducing demands did not show significant relationships with the other 2 dimensions (at both the item and latent levels). In Study 2, a longitudinal study (350 school superintendents, Mage = 56.54, SDage = 5.11, Wave = 2, lag = 10 months), we further supported the structural results obtained in Study 1; furthermore, using a factorial cross-lagged panel model with 2 widely-accepted correlated constructs of job crafting (i.e., work engagement and emotional exhaustion), we again supported the independent nature of the reducing demands dimension, and we also showed the importance of seeking challenges. Indeed, the latter was a significant longitudinal predictor of work engagement, while all the other cross-lagged relationships were nonsignificant. Overall, our studies pose new questions about the structure of job crafting in older-worker populations.