When support is unwanted: The role of psychological contract type and perceived organizational support in predicting bridge employment intentions

Empowered to Stay Active: Psychological Empowerment, Retirement Timing, and Later Life Work

Motivating older employees both to prolong their working lives and to stay active even after retirement has become increasingly important due to rising old-age dependency ratios. Later life work-including both paid work and volunteering-has thus become an important topic for scholars and practitioners. We aim to extend research on later life work by hypothesizing that psychological empowerment at work increases not only desired and actual retirement ages but also levels of later life work. Second, we test differential effects of psychological empowerment on later life work, expecting it to be more strongly related to paid work after retirement (i.e., bridge employment) than to volunteering. Third, we suggest that the relationship between psychological empowerment and bridge employment depends on the employees' level of physical limitations. We used data from a longitudinal panel study in Germany in which structured telephone interviews were conducted. A sample of older individuals who had retired between two waves of measurement was drawn (time lag: three years; n = 210). The results of a path analysis support the postulated mediation. Furthermore, as expected, psychological empowerment more accurately predicted bridge employment than volunteering, and physical limitations moderated the relationship between psychological empowerment and bridge employment. Lastly, additional analyses on the individual empowerment facets revealed that only the competence facet played a significant role in the proposed hypotheses. Overall, our findings suggest that psychological empowerment may help to increase older employees' motivation to delay retirement and to stay active even after retirement.

You Can Leave the Younger Workers Out of It! Toward a Centered Paradigm for Studying Older Workers’ Employment Relationships and Late-Career Dynamics

Are late careers worth studying in their own right? The way we think and reason about older workers and late careers—in scholarship and in practice—has been disproportionately informed by a research paradigm that focuses on age differences among employees, which captures how older workers on average differ from younger workers on average. While this contrastive paradigm has been generative, it can also inaccurately portray older workers as a static, homogenous group. In contrast, older workers show considerable heterogeneity (older workers vary), meaningful dynamics (older workers change), and dynamic heterogeneity (older workers vary in how they change). In this paper, we propose that the contrastive paradigm be complemented with a centered paradigm that centers on how older workers vary and change. We develop a theoretical model of how older worker dynamics and older worker heterogeneity shape the quality of their employment relationship—in terms of psychological contracts—which in turn shape their career trajectories and work role enactment. By centering this line of research on older workers, we gain a higher-resolution view of these late careers as unfolding over time and varying among older workers.

Perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behavior-A study of the moderating effect of volunteer participation motivation, and cross-level effect of transformational leadership and organizational climate

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behavior, and to explore the moderating effect of volunteer participation motivation on the relationship between the variables, as well as the cross-level effect of transformational leadership and organizational climate. In this study, the front-liners of Taiwan's National Immigration Agency were the study subjects. A total of 289 employee questionnaires were filled out and returned. It was found that employees' POS had a positive effect on OCB, while volunteer participation motivation had a moderating effect on the relationships between the variables. Furthermore, transformational leadership and organizational climate were found to have a cross-level effect on enhancing employees' POS, boosting their motivation to volunteer, and triggering more OCB in employees. The results of this study provide the organization with development measures to encourage its employees to convey more OCB, and improve their service performance. Moreover, based on research evidence that an organization encourages employees to actively participate in voluntary work, and should promote cooperation between the employees and the public by enhancing their sense of public responsibility, improving their services to the public, creating a harmonious work climate for the employees, and offering more opportunities for the public to engage with the employees.

Factors Affecting Request & Receipt of I-deals: An Investigation in the Context of Older Workers

I-deals are a key method for organizations to retain and motivate employees, yet little research has investigated employee motivations for seeking i-deals and antecedents to request and receipt. We examine these largely invisible antecedents of i-deals in the context of older workers, a cohort of increasing importance in the workplace. Through thematic analysis of 82 in-depth interviews with Australian workers over the age of 50, we develop a model of i-deal emergence that delineates the motivation, request, and receipt stages of i-deals. We identified four motivational influences to seek i-deals: to improve work–life balance, to repair psychological contract breach, and to craft satisfactory retirement pathways; high levels of existing job-role autonomy acted as a demotivator to request i-deals. We also identified three factors associated with an i-deal request being granted: an older worker’s value to the organization, positive employee–manager relationships, and emphasis of mutual benefit for employee and employer. We identified a novel antecedent for i-deals: feasibility—an older worker’s perception of how likely they are to be successful when requesting a desired i-deal. Feasibility perceptions are informed by organizational practices and policies around i-deals, co-worker i-deal experiences, and job-role constraints. Feasibility can influence an employee’s decisions to request an i-deal and also directly affect attitudes toward the employer, regardless of whether an i-deal is present, desired, or otherwise. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and future directions outlined.

The retention of older employees and core work activities: Evidence from Denmark

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Retention of older employees in the labour market is crucial to cope with ageing populations. Retention of older employees can appear in different forms, such as phased retirement, bridge jobs, career development, or health promotion. However, little is known about how the offering of these retention strategies may vary across workplaces with different core work activities because the opportunities to implement different types of retention strategies are preconditioned by differences in the economic and labour market climate.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

The study utilises data from a survey conducted among Danish workplaces in 2018, which is linked to administrative register data to conduct KHB-corrected logistic regression models. The study distinguishes among production workplaces, service and welfare workplaces, and information workplaces.

RESULTS

Phased retirement is most prevalent in service and welfare workplaces, whereas job bridging is most prevalent in both service and welfare and production workplaces. Career development and health promotion strategies are most prevalent in information workplaces. These retention differences between workplaces with different core work activities are in most cases explained by differences in trade union influence, physical working demands, and knowledge intensity.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Although the type of retention strategy offered in the workplace largely matches the core work activity within the workplace, particularly production workplaces could feasibly take more advantage of using career development or health promotion strategies since the employees of these workplaces are more likely to retire early due to poor health and physical working conditions.

Why and When Do Good Soldiers Behave Unethically? Introducing Conservation of Resources Theory to Explain the Curvilinear Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Previous research about organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) has produced contradictory results. Drawing from the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the present study tries to explain the contradictory findings by examining the curvilinear relationship between OCB and CWB. Using data collected at three time points from 426 employees and 110 supervisors in Chinese companies, data analysis shows that OCB has an inverted U-shaped relationship with CWB. The results also demonstrate that citizenship fatigue mediates the relationship between OCB and CWB, perceived organizational support (POS) moderates the relationship between OCB and citizenship fatigue. In addition, POS moderates the mediating effect of citizenship fatigue in the inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between OCB and CWB. This mediating effect is stronger under conditions of low POS than high POS. The findings present a complementary explanation of the conflicting relationships between OCB and CWB.

Impact of Perceived Organizational Support on OCB in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic in Hungary: Employee Engagement and Affective Commitment as Mediators

The performance of the employees and productivity of each individual, in general, have been badly affected because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizational citizenship behavior is regarded as an interpretation of the performance of the employee which is essential to contribute more to the organization’s processes and success. Therefore, to increase the organizational effectiveness and achieve its goals, it is crucial to understand the factors affecting the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees. This study aims to examine the impact of perceived organizational support on organizational citizenship behavior with the mediating role of employee engagement and affective commitment. To collect the data for this study, a linear snowball sampling method was used, and 380 foreign employees working in different service companies in Hungary participated in the survey. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypothesis. The results of the study revealed that perceived organizational support positively associated with organizational citizenship behavior and this relationship is also strongly mediated by employee engagement. On the other hand, employee engagement and affective commitment pose a direct positive influence on organizational citizenship behavior. This study has theoretical and practical implications as it will provide a comprehensive framework to better understand the factors influencing the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees.