Aging Workers and the Employee-Employer Relationship

P. Matthijs Bal · Dorien T.A.M. Kooij · Denise M. Rousseau

Sept 2014 · Springer

About this eBook

This book focuses on the aging workforce from the employment relationship perspective. This innovative book specifically focuses on how organizations can ensure their aging workers remain motivated, productive and healthy. In 15 chapters, several experts on this topic describe how organizations through effective human resource management can ensure that workers are able to continue working at higher age. In addition, this book discusses the role older workers themselves play in continuing work at higher age. To do this, the authors integrate research from different areas, such as literature on leadership, psychological contracts and diversity with literature on the aging workforce. Through this integration this book provides innovative ways for organizations and workers to maintain productivity, motivation and health. Aging Workers and the Employee-Employer Relationship summarizes the latest research on how employment relationships change with age and its implications for supporting the well-being, motivation and productivity of older workers. It identifies ways to improve how both companies and workers solve the problems they face. These include better designed employment practices and more adaptive job content and developmental opportunities for aging workers along with activities aging workers can engage to enhance their own job crafting, learning and employability.

About the author

P. Matthijs Bal is Reader at the School of Management, University of Bath, United Kingdom. He obtained his PhD cum laude at VU University Amsterdam with research on psychological contracts of older workers. He worked at Erasmus University Rotterdam and VU University Amsterdam before he moved to Bath. His research interests concern the aging workforce, individualization of work arrangements, psychological contracts and the impact of fictional narratives in the workplace. He has published in a wide range of journals, including Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Vocational Behavior and PLOS One.

Dorien Kooij is an assistant professor at the Department of Human Resource Studies of Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on aging at work and in particular on HR practices for older workers and on how work motivation changes with aging. She has published in international peer reviewed journals such as Journal of Organizational Behavior and Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Denise M. Rousseau is the H.J. Heinz II University Professor of Organizational Behavior and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III College and the Tepper School of Business. She is the faculty director of the Institute for Social Enterprise and Innovation and chair of Health Care Policy and Management program. She was previously on the faculty of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, the University of Michigan's Department of Psychology and Institute for Social Research and the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. Rousseau's research focuses upon the impact workers have on the employment relationship and the firms that employ them. It informs critical concerns such as worker well-being and career development, organizational effectiveness, the management of change, firm ownership and governance and industrial relations.