Putting the Worker Age Front and Center: A Multidimensional and Nuanced View of Age in Organizations

The age demographics in the modern workforce are shifting dramatically, with modern workplaces looking older and more age-diverse than ever before. Although existing work has made significant contributions to our understanding of age in the workplace, answers to fundamental questions such as how worker age affects performance remain unanswered. Age scholars have argued that in order to resolve existing inconsistencies and advance understanding of this timely topic, the field ought to take a more nuanced and multidimensional view of age in organizations. The current symposium aims to respond to this call by exploring (1) how age and gender interact to shape stereotype content, (2) how generational identity as a millennial and racial identity jointly predict turnover intentions, (3) how older workers’ temporal social comparisons with younger versus older colleagues shape engagement and withdrawal from work, (4) how subjective age (i.e. how old one perceives oneself to be) affects organizational outcomes, and (5) attitudes toward all (not just older) age groups, and people’s assumptions about society’s attitudes towards these groups. By looking at age through many different lenses, including intersectionality, subjective age, social comparisons processes, and ageism against the young, this symposium helps inject much-needed nuance and multidimensionality into the older worker literature, toward stronger theoretical perspectives and definitive conclusions. Stereotypes of Women and Men in Different Age Groups Author: Angela Shakeri; NYU Stern School of Business Author: Michael S. North; New York U. A Social Identity Perspective on Millennials’ Turnover Intentions Author: Shona G. Smith; U. of Texas At Arlington Author: Ariane Froidevaux; U. of Texas At Arlington Author: Myrtle P. Bell; U. of Texas At Arlington A Temporal Social Comparison Perspective on Older Workers’ Engagement and Withdrawal at Work Author: Susan Reh; U. of Exeter Business School Author: Daniela Andrei; Curtin Business School Author: Lucinda Iles; Centre for Transformative Work Design / Curtin U. Subjective Age in the Context of an Aging Workforce Author: Noemi Nagy; U. of South Florida Author: Michael S. North; New York U. “How Biased Do You Think We Are!?” Comparing Actual versus Estimated Sentiments toward Age Groups Author: Stéphane Francioli; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Michael S. North; New York U. Author: Angela Shakeri; NYU Stern School of Business