Ann McGoldrick

A flexible future for older workers

Explores the extent and patterns of age discrimination within a changing workplace context, and specifically focuses on how employment flexibility may be used to the mutual advantage of employers and older workers. Results are presented from two large‐scale national surveys conducted with the Institute of Personnel Management (1994, n = 1,700) and the Institute of Management (1995, n = 1,665). Case study research conducted with Ford/XR Associates, J. Sainsbury and the UK National Health Service is also reported. Research shows that although age discrimination in employment remains extensive, an innovative approach to the recruitment, utilization and retention of older workers may bring a series of positive joint gains.

HRM service practices: flexibility, quality and employee strategy

Основной тезис статьи - потребность соответствовать все более конкурентным условиям в отраслях промышленности и сфере обслуживания поощряет развитие более стратегического подхода к управлению человеческими ресурсами. Авторами представлено социологическое исследование в секторе розничной торговли, изучающее подходы компании к вербовке и удержанию своих служащих. Авторы используют метод интервью и рассматривают позиции менеджеров и служащих для оценки существующих проблем и выявления организационных показателей. Предложена модель для демонстрации связи между определенными социальными характеристиками группы рабочих и их последующими показателями трудовой занятости. Обнаружено, что когда перспективы управления положительны, возникает некоторая двойственность отношения к стратегии управления персоналом в организации. В то время как более старшие сотрудники воспринимаются руководством подходящими для многих типов работы, использование рабочей силы тем не менее сохраняет тенденцию тяготения к традиционным трудовым источникам. Замечено, что качественные показатели труда, такие, как обслуживание, мотивация и удовлетворенность трудом актуальны для служащих старшего возраста. А при тягательность показателей, касающихся способности к обучению, гибкости в работе с новыми технологиями, выражена не столь отчетливо. Обнаружено, что старшие служащие выше оценивают статус рабочего места, по сравнению с более молодыми рабочими, которые руководствуются в основном финансовыми соображениями.

Recruitment Advertising: Discrimination on the Basis of Age

Examines the attitudes of employers with regard to age discrimination and the use of media advertising to infer age preference without actually stating an age‐bar. Analyses how, through discrete advertising in selected newspapers and journals, some employers are still youth‐oriented and not taking into consideration that the older end of the age spectrum can still offer commitment, attitudinal maturity, and mentoring roles. Also discloses how the use of recruitment agencies as a means for age discrimination/selection is the choice of many organizations, so avoiding the business of selection until the short‐list stage.

Health and Ageing as Factors in the Retirement Experience

Abstract This investigation focuses upon satisfaction with retirement and the relationship to perceptions of physical and mental health outcomes, age, and time in retirement. An intensive interview programme was the basis for a U.K. postal questionnaire survey of early retired men (n = 1207), utilizing life satisfaction indices and a factor analysis of advantages and concerns experienced. Respondents were generally satisfied with retirement, particularly if finances were adequate. While self-reported physical and mental health improvement was common, a significant minority had experienced serious health problems subsequent to retiring, which affected satisfaction. Younger respondents tended to score more highly on satisfaction scales and in respect of perceived advantages, particularly the under 60s. Concerns were, however, demonstrated at all ages, although for differing reasons. A voluntary rather than a compulsory exit from the labour force as anticipated proved more likely to result in satisfaction wi...

Organisational Sources of Executive Stress and Satisfaction

Working in organisations not only provides a large section of the population with life-sustaining income, but also exerts its own pressures and stresses on them, which can ultimately have negative consequences both for achieving the goals of organisations and meeting the needs of the individuals working within them. Before we examine the various sources of executive pressure and stress at work, it might be useful to define these two central concepts. ‘Pressure’ is an external or internal force acting on an individual to perform in a particular way or achieve a particular end result. This can be a source of some discomfort and some anxiety, but it can be at the same time exciting, challenging, and growth-producing. ‘Stress’, on the other hand, has only negative outcomes for the individual concerned because (1) the individual feels that he or she will not (in the long term) be able to cope, and therefore (2) will find it necessary to deal with it in a defensive and maladaptive way. Pressure is a tolerable, manageable condition, includes some positive attributes, and is characterised by activity and productive coping; stress is a regressive and counter-productive condition, can produce extreme and usually undifferentiated anxiety, and is characterised by defensive coping.

Early Retirement and the Executive

Until very recently early retirement has not been considered a problem in Britain. Only a small number of companies and organisations allowed an individual to retire before their established normal retirement age, unless he was no longer fit to work (BIM, 1967). Few individual were interested in early retirement on account of the serious effect that this had on pension rights and benefits. The situation is rapidly changing. All the indications suggest that Britain is following the same trend noticeable much earlier in the United States. There, early retirement has become an option, if not a right, in a wide variety of industries (Myers and Fox, 1971). This is particularly true of executives, and, in addition, British managers are now accepting early retirement at an increasingly high rate.8

The Unemployed (Redundant) Executive

The number of executive redundancies is growing at a steadily increasing rate. Although a great deal has been written about it in the popular press, not enough systematic work has been done to assess the impact of this phenomenon on the psychological state of the redundant executive, his family and the wider community. It was felt, therefore, that it might be useful here, first, to review the work carried out into unemployment generally, which can provide us with insight into the nature and problems of being redundant; and second, to examine specifically the plight of executives who have lost their jobs.7

Improving the Quality of Executive Life: the Management of Stress

The extent to which stress at work produces a degree of psychological impairment has become a central issue in the current debate of the quality of working life. Various analyses of alienation as a result of paced assembly lines and other forms of mass production have spawned a range of possible initiatives to mitigate that condition: job enrichment, autonomous work groups and versions of industrial democracy are some of the best known.

Executives’ Wives: their Changing Role and its Impact on Executives at Work and Home

Recently it has been suggested (Cooper and Marshall, 1978; Marshall and Cooper, 1978) that one of the major sources of managerial stress today can be found in the occupational and domestic role conflicts experienced by the executive and his wife. It has been argued that this is due in part to the changing role of women in society, especially to the greater opportunities for women to work and the concomitant changing conceptions of marriage. Although the UK has been slower to adopt equal opportunity legislation and to create the facilities in industry and elsewhere for women to take advantage of this legislation than the US, there is a definite change in the attitudes and behaviour among a growing group of younger-generation women. This is particularly beginning to have an impact on the individual manager, and indirectly on his organisation as well. This was evident from a large-scale study undertaken to assess the sources of managerial stress, and the purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with a profile of the changing Executive Wife, based on extensive, in-depth interviews with a large sample of managers (in a large UK organisation) and their wives, and many other less formal observations of junior to senior managers and their wives in other British companies.6

Executive Training and Development: its Positive and Negative Effects

Managers are dealing increasingly with more and more complex ‘people problems’ in the course of their work (Cooper, 1976), which has led to an enormous growth in executive training and development in the human relations or social skills. Tens of thousands of managers each year are sent on or volunteer for some form of experiential small-group training programme. After over two decades of this type of executive training, concerned people are beginning to ask: ‘what are the adverse and growthful effects of this training on the quality of executive life?’; ‘are managers showing improvements at work and home as a result of this substantial training initiative?’; and, in particular, ‘what are the psychological costs of this training on the individual, his work colleagues, his family and the organisation?’. Since experiential small-group training has become one of the most important tools in attempting to improve the quality of work relationships of managers in organisations (in the West), it was felt that we should explore in depth a study carried out by the author, for the UK Government’s Training Services Agency, into the positive and adverse effects of social skill training for managers based on experiential small-group methods.5