Heike Schroder

National institutions and employers’ age management practices in Britain and Germany: ‘Path dependence’ and option exploration

We pursue a comparative analysis of employers’ age management practices in Britain and Germany, asking how valid ‘convergence’ and ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ theories are. After rejecting the convergence verdict, we proceed to ask how far ‘path dependence’ helps explain inter-country differences. Through 19 interviews with British and German experts, we find that firms have reacted in different ways to promptings from the EU and the two states. Change has been modest and a rhetoric-reality gap exists in firms as they seek to hedge. We point to continuities in German institutional methods of developing new initiatives, and the emerging role of British NGOs in helping firms and the state develop new options. We argue that ‘path dependence’ offers insight into the national comparison, but also advance the idea of national modes of firm option-exploration as an important way of conceptualizing the processes involved.

Trade union responses to ageing workforces in the UK and Germany

Ageing workforces are placing conflicting pressures on European trade unions in order to, on the one hand, protect pensions and early retirement routes, and, on the other, promote human resource management (HRM) policies geared towards enabling their older members to extend working life. Using interviews from German and United Kingdom (UK) trade unions, we discuss how unions are both constrained and enabled by pre-existing institutional structures in advocating approaches to age management. In Germany, some unions use their strong institutional role to affect public policy and industrial change at national and sectoral levels. UK unions have taken a more defensive approach, focused on protecting pension rights. The contrasting varieties of capitalism, welfare systems and trade unions’ own orientations are creating different pressures and mechanisms to which unions need to respond. While the German inclusive system is providing unions with mechanisms for negotiating collectively at the national level, UK unions’ activism remains localized.

HRM and the employment of older workers: Germany and Britain compared

This study examines Human Resource Management (HRM) policies and practices towards older workers in Britain and Germany. While it is widely suggested that older workers have to be better integrated into the labour market, youth-centric HRM is still prevalent. However, HRM is shaped by multiple and contradictory pressures from the international and national institutional environments. We test this dynamic by analysing two national surveys, the German firm panel (IAB) and the British Workplace and Employment Relations Survey (WERS). Our findings suggest that the institutional environment shapes HR policies and practices distinctively in both countries. We find that age discrimination at the workplace is more prevalent in Germany than in Britain, which can be explained by divergent institutional patterns. As a result, we argue that although both countries will have to continue fostering an age-neutral HR approach, this has to take country-specific institutional peculiarities into account.

Government as Institutional Entrepreneur: Extending Working Life in the UK and Japan.

Through the lens of Institutional Entrepreneurship, this paper discusses how governments use the levers of power afforded through business and welfare systems to affect change in the organisational management of older workers. It does so using national stakeholder interviews in two contrasting economies: the United Kingdom and Japan. Both governments have taken a ‘light-touch’ approach to work and retirement. However, the highly institutionalised Japanese system affords the government greater leverage than that of the liberal UK system in changing employer practices at the workplace level.

Trends and determinants of work-retirement transitions under changing institutional conditions : Germany, England and Japan compared

Many governments world-wide are promoting longer working life due to the social and economic repercussions of demographic change. However, not all workers are equally able to extend their employment careers. Thus, while national policies raise the overall level of labour market participation, they might create new social and labour market inequalities. This paper explores how institutional differences in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan affect individual retirement decisions on the aggregate level, and variations in individuals’ degree of choice within and across countries. We investigate which groups of workers are disproportionately at risk of being ‘pushed’ out of employment, and how such inequalities have changed over time. We use comparable national longitudinal survey datasets focusing on the older population in England, Germany and Japan. Results point to cross-national differences in retirement transitions. Retirement transitions in Germany have occurred at an earlier age than in England and Japan. In Japan, the incidence of involuntary retirement is the lowest, reflecting an institutional context prescribing that employers provide employment until pension age, while Germany and England display substantial proportions of involuntary exits triggered by organisational-level redundancies, persistent early retirement plans or individual ill-health.

The Impact of National Context on Age Diversity and Age Management: The Case of the UK and Hong Kong

This chapter explores how governments are responding to ageing demographics using two case studies: the UK and Hong Kong. Both economies are facing dual challenges: addressing chronic skills shortages which necessitate longer working lives and closing the gap in pension savings as citizens need to prepare for longer periods of old age. We will explore how governments in these contrasting economies are using both the levers of the welfare state and employment law to shape employment and savings patterns. Although the timing may differ, the two governments are following similar tracks of placing the onus for both extended working life and savings on individuals while not significantly intervening in firms’ business and Human Resource (HR) processes. The most significant difference between the two governments’ responses to ageing demographics lies in how they have been tackling workplace ageism since the beginning of the millennium. While the Hong Kong government focused its efforts on encouraging voluntary good practice by businesses, in the UK, regulations are now in place to curtail both workplace age discrimination and mandatory retirement. However, the latter interventions are directly in response to the European Union (EU)’s Lisbon Protocol, which directed member states to take action to raise participation rates of people aged 55–64.

Workplace Accommodation for Older Teachers in Japan and Germany: The Role of the Institutional Context in Supporting Late Career Options for Teachers with Ill Health **

Owing to the ageing of their respective populations, policy-makers in Japan and Germany are challenged to extend the working life of individual employees. However, conditions of physical and mental ill health tend to increase with old age, leading to disabilities that affect whether and how individuals can remain active in the labour market. Workplace accommodation is a means to enable disabled individuals to remain productively employed. Drawing on qualitative interview data, this discussion explores how institutions such as School Authorities in Japan and Germany use workplace accommodation to support teachers with physical and mental disabilities. Teachers are a white-collar profession strongly affected by ill health, especially burnout. The discussion furthermore explores how such workplace accommodation measures influence older teachers´ career expectations and career outcomes, including thoughts about (early) retirement. It finds that even though the institutional contexts in Japan and Germany are rather similar, career options and expectations vary, though with similar (negative) outcomes for national strategies towards the extension of working lives.

Rationale for and implementation of age-neutral HRM in divergent institutional contexts – examples from Britain and Germany

Owing to demographic change as well as international and national pressures, organisations will have to abandon oftentimes prevalent youth-centric HRM practices in favour of age-neutral HRM that is inclusive of the entire workforce, regardless of age. In order to do so, organisations turn to ‘best practice’ guides. These, however, do not tend to differentiate recommendations by country and/or sector. Based on research in eight case study organisations in the chemical, steel and retail sectors as well as in public schools in Germany and Britain, this chapter argues that the rationale for and the implementation of age-neutral HRM practices differ by national institutional and sectoral context as well as by the relative influence of social partners. Hence, organisations planning to implement age-neutral HRM should take organisational, institutional and sectoral peculiarities into account when doing so.

Age, work and pensions in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong: An institutional perspective:

This article explores whether comparative institutionalism can be used to identify path-dependent approaches to the management of ageing workforces in the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong Special ...

Workforce Management and the Retention of Older Staff: Macro and Organisational-Level Processes in the United Kingdom and South Korea

Abstract We discuss workforce management, related to those aged 50+ , in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea. With international competitiveness becoming increasingly crucial, retaining the ‘right’ mix of employees to achieve strategic organisational goals is likely to determine organisational success. However, we argue that workforce management is not only influenced by organisational-level strategy but also by national institutional and sectoral policies. Decisions on whether and how to retain older workers are therefore (co-)determined by institutional incentives and barriers to doing so. We find that British and Korean governments have legislated in favour of extended working lives and, hence, the retention of ageing workforces. In the United Kingdom, pension eligibility ages are being increased and in Korea mandatory retirement age has been raised to age 60. While changes to the UK pension systems leave individuals with the (financial) risks associated with extended working lives, the Korean government tries to protect individuals from financial hardship by enabling them to remain longer in their primary career. However, whether and how government regulation plays out depends on how organisations react to it. The Korean discussion, in fact, shows that there might be leeway: organisations might continue to externalise their employees early framed as honourable, or voluntary, early retirement, which might not be in the interest of the individual but very much in the interest of the organisation. It therefore appears as if the retention of ageing staff is not (yet) considered to be of strategic importance by many organisations in these countries.