Dordoni Paola, Van der Heijden Beatrice, Peters Pascale, Kraus-Hoogeveen Sascha, Argentero Piergiorgio
Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Faculty of Management Sciences, Institute for Management Research, Business Administration, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2017 Oct 17;8:1717. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01717. eCollection 2017.
In European nations, the aging of the workforce is a major issue which is increasingly addressed both in national and organizational policies in order to sustain older workers' employability and to encourage longer working lives. Particularly older workers' employability can be viewed an important issue as this has the potential to motivate them for their work and change their intention to retire. Based on lifespan development theories and Van der Heijden's 'employability enhancement model', this paper develops and tests an age-moderated mediation model (which refers to the processes that we want to test in this model), linking older workers' (55 years old and over) perceptions of job support for learning (job-related factor) and perceptions of negative age stereotypes on productivity (organizational factor), on the one hand, and their intention to retire, on the other hand, via their participation in employability enhancing activities, being the mediator in our model. A total of 2,082 workers aged 55 years and above were included in the analyses. Results revealed that the two proposed relationships between the predictors and intention to retire were mediated by participation in employability enhancing activities, reflecting two mechanisms through which work context affects intention to retire (namely 'a gain spiral and a loss spiral'). Multi-Group SEM analyses, distinguishing between two age groups (55-60 and 61-65 years old), revealed different paths for the two distinguished groups of older workers. Employability mediated the relationship between perceptions of job support for learning and intention to retire in both age groups, whereas it only mediated the relationship between perceptions of negative age stereotypes and intention to retire in the 55-60 group. From our empirical study, we may conclude that employability is an important factor in the light of older workers' intention to retire. In order to motivate this category of workers to participate in employability enhancing activities and to work longer, negative age stereotypes need to be combated. In addition, creating job support for learning over the lifespan is also an important HR practice to be implemented in nowadays' working life.
在欧洲国家，劳动力老龄化是一个重大问题，国家和组织政策越来越关注这一问题，以维持老年工人的就业能力，并鼓励延长工作寿命。特别是老年工人的就业能力可被视为一个重要问题，因为这有可能激发他们的工作积极性，并改变他们的退休意愿。基于寿命发展理论和范德海登的“就业能力提升模型”，本文构建并检验了一个年龄调节中介模型（指我们想在该模型中检验的过程），该模型一方面将老年工人（55岁及以上）对学习的工作支持感知（与工作相关的因素）和对生产率方面负面年龄刻板印象的感知（组织因素），与另一方面他们的退休意愿联系起来，通过他们参与就业能力提升活动来实现，就业能力提升活动是我们模型中的中介变量。共有2082名55岁及以上的工人参与了分析。结果显示，预测因素与退休意愿之间的两个假设关系通过参与就业能力提升活动得到了中介作用，反映了工作环境影响退休意愿的两种机制（即“收益螺旋”和“损失螺旋”）。多组结构方程模型分析区分了两个年龄组（55 - 60岁和61 - 65岁），结果显示这两组老年工人的路径不同。就业能力在两个年龄组中都中介了对学习的工作支持感知与退休意愿之间的关系，而在55 - 60岁组中，它仅中介了对负面年龄刻板印象的感知与退休意愿之间的关系。从我们的实证研究中可以得出结论，就老年工人的退休意愿而言，就业能力是一个重要因素。为了激励这类工人参与就业能力提升活动并延长工作时间，需要消除负面年龄刻板印象。此外，在整个职业生涯中创造对学习的工作支持也是当今工作生活中需要实施的一项重要人力资源实践。
