Donatienne Desmette

When a ‘worker’ becomes an ‘older worker’: the effects of age-related social identity on attitudes towards retirement and work

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between perceived social identity as an “older worker” and attitudes towards early retirement and commitment to work.

Ageism at work: The impact of intergenerational contact and organizational multi-age perspective

Despite the prevalence of ageism in the workplace, little empirical effort has been devoted to analysing the contextual factors that may help reduce it. Building upon research on intergroup contact and multiculturalism, we examine in two studies how intergenerational contact and organizational multi-age perspective may contribute toward mitigating ageism and improving work attitudes through a dual identity process. In Study 1, SEM analyses confirm that workers’ dual identity is a key mediator of the effects of context on both ageism and attitudes at work. Study 2 replicates and extends the results of Study 1, firstly by showing the mediational effects of perceived procedural justice, and secondly by investigating stereotypes more closely related to the population of older workers. As a set, our findings shed new light on ageism at work as well as on the protective role of two aspects of the social context.

The Relationship Between Perceived Organizational Support and Affective Commitment: A Social Identity Perspective

The present research examines how the social identity perspective contributes to a better understanding of the relationships between perceived organizational support, affective commitment, and employees’ performance at work. Using a sample of 253 employees from an engineering company, Study 1 found that organizational identification partially mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and affective commitment. The results of Study 1 also indicated that the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational identification is moderated by organizational prestige. In Study 2, using a sample of 179 postal employees, the authors replicated the mediating role of organizational identification in the relationship between perceived organizational support and affective commitment and found that affective commitment mediates the relationship between organizational identification and supervisor’s ratings of extra-role performance.

Future Time Perspective in the Work Context: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies

A core construct in the lifespan theory of socioemotional selectivity, future time perspective (FTP) refers to individuals’ perceptions of their remaining time in life. Its adaptation to the work context, occupational future time perspective (OFTP), entails workers’ perceptions of remaining time and opportunities in their careers. Over the past decade, several quantitative studies have investigated antecedents and consequences of general FTP and OFTP in the work context (i.e., FTP at work). We systematically review and critically discuss this literature on general FTP (k = 17 studies) and OFTP (k = 16 studies) and highlight implications for future research and practice. Results of our systematic review show that, in addition to its strong negative relationship with age, FTP at work is also associated with other individual (e.g., personality traits) and contextual variables (e.g., job characteristics). Moreover, FTP at work has been shown to mediate and moderate relationships of individual and contextual antecedents with occupational well-being, as well as motivational and behavioral outcomes. As a whole, findings suggest that FTP at work is an important variable in the field of work and aging, and that future research should improve the ways in which FTP at work is measured and results on FTP at work are reported.

What does Daneman and Carpenter's reading span really measure?

Reading span was assessed in three conditions aiming at varying the processing demands of a reading task. In a Sentence Reading Condition, the participants read aloud lists of sentences and memorize the final word of each sentence as in the original task of Daneman and Carpenter. In two other conditions, each sentence was replaced either by a series of unrelated words (Word Reading Condition) or by a series of meaningless syllables (Syllable Reading Condition); in these two conditions, however, each series ended with the same test words as in the Sentence Reading Condition. There was no significant effect of the condition on the scores for reading span. It is concluded that the typically low scores on reading span are not so much due to the processing demands of the task as to the disruptive effects of the articulatory suppression which characterizes the original task.

Intentions to Continue Working and Its Predictors

What we know about managing and retaining older workers is quite limited. Attention is needed regarding the retention of older workers due to demographic shifts and their implications for organizational needs. Simply put, organizations need to retain older workers. Both because they want to keep the older workers’ knowledge “on board” and depend on older workers as the availability of younger workers declines. The chapter addresses the concept of intention to continue working among older workers. How can it be defined? How is it different or related to concepts such as work motivation, commitment and intention to retire early? We review the findings regarding the personal, organizational and context factors that predict it. We need to understand the influences on the employees’ intentions to continue working. In doing so, the HR practices to stimulate older employees to stay at work longer can be better identified. We discuss Human Resource Management practices that can influence employee intentions to continue working.