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Employees need a sustainable career to prolong their working lives. The ability, motivation and opportunity to work form an important basis for sustainable careers across the lifespan. However, over the lifespan of their careers employees are likely to experience several career shocks (e.g. becoming chronically ill or being fired) which might result in unsustainable trajectories. This study aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable careers by unraveling the process through which careers shocks relate to career (un)sustainability and what role perceptions of human resource practices play in the process.

Thirty-three in-depth retrospective interviews with participants of 50 years and older were conducted and analyzed using a template analysis.

Results showed that career shocks influence career sustainability through a process of changes in demands or changes in resources, which in turn, relate to changes in person–job fit. When person-job–fit diminished, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working decreased, whereas when person–job fit improved, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working improved as well. Organizations appear to be able to diminish the negative consequences of career shocks by offering job resources such as HR practices in response to career shocks.

A limitation of this study is the retrospective nature of the interviews, which could have resulted in recollection bias.

This study gives HRM practitioners insight into the HR practices that are effective in overcoming career shocks.

This study extends existing literature by including career shocks as possible predictors of sustainable careers.

The aging workforce is becoming an increasingly important topic in today’s labor market. However, most scientific research and organizational policies focus on chronological age as the main determinant of successful aging. Based on life span developmental theories – primarily socioemotional selectivity theory and motivational theory of life span development – the purpose of this paper is to test the added value of using subjective age – in terms of remaining opportunities and remaining time – over and above chronological age in their associations with motivation at work and motivation to work.

Workers from five different divisions throughout the Netherlands (n=186) from a taxi company participated in the survey study.

The results from the regression analyses and structural equation modeling analyses support the hypotheses: when subjective age was included in the models, chronological age was virtually unrelated to workers’ intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and motivation to continue to work for one’s organization. Moreover, subjective age was strongly related to work motivation. Specifically, workers who perceived many remaining opportunities were more intrinsically and extrinsically motivated, and those who perceived a lot of remaining time were more motivated across the board.

The findings indicate that subjective age is an important concept to include in studies focussing on successful aging, thereby contributing to life span developmental theories. Further implications for research and practice are discussed.

In recent years, significant demographic changes in most industrial countries have tremendously affected the age distribution of workers in organizations. In general, the workforce has become more age-diverse, providing significant and new challenges for human resource management and leadership processes. The current paper aims to address age-related stereotypes as a major factor that might impede potential benefits of age diversity in organizations.

After a brief review of potential detrimental effects of age-related stereotyping at work, the authors discuss the validity of typical age stereotypes based on new findings from large-scale empirical research with more than 160,000 workers overall.

Although the research summarized in this review is based on large samples including several thousand workers, the cross-sectional nature of the studies does not control for cohort or generational effects, nor for (self-)selection biases. However, the summarized results still provide important guidelines given that challenges due to age diversity in modern organizations today have to be dealt with regardless of the concrete origins of the age-related differences.

This is one of the first reviews challenging popular misbeliefs about older workers based on large-scale empirical research.

Due to demographic changes in most industrialized countries, the average age of working people is continuously increasing, and the workforce is becoming more age-diverse. This review, together with the earlier JMP Special Issue “Facilitating age diversity in organizations – part I: challenging popular misbeliefs”, aims to summarize new empirical research on age diversity in organizations, and on potential ways to support beneficial effects of age diversity in teams and organizations. The second part of the Special Issue focusses on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups.

A literature review is provided summarizing and discussing relevant empirical research on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups at work.

The summarized research revealed a number of challenges to benefit from age diversity in organizations, such as in-group favoritism, age norms about appropriate behavior of older workers, intentional and unintentional age discrimination, differences in communication styles, and difference in attitudes towards age diversity. At the same time, managerial strategies to address these challenges are developed.

Together with the first part of this Special Issue, this is one of the first reviews on ways to address the increasing age diversity in work organizations based on sound empirical research.

The article aims to introduce two Special Issues of Journal of Managerial Psychology on age diversity in organizations. It reviews two frameworks for understanding age diversity. The first framework focuses on age stereotypes and bias that have a negative influence on human resource decision making about older workers. The second framework emphasizes that the retirement of older workers will create a shortage of talented employees in organizations. As a result, we need to find ways of retaining older workers in organizations, and these goals are more important in some nations than others.

Conceptual article.

This is a conceptual article, but the results offer suggestions for increasing age diversity in organizations.

The article suggests that additional research is needed on the two frameworks noted above.

This article suggests several strategies for reducing biases against older workers, and increasing their retention in organizations, for example flexible work arrangements, training, and a supportive climate.

Little research has examined the challenges associated with age diversity, and the shortage of talented employees in organizations. Thus, this article makes a unique contribution to the literature because it examines these important issues. It also highlights directions for research, practice and society as a whole.

The aim of this survey study among N=180 Dutch teachers was to examine the moderating role of calendar age and proactive personality in the relationships between developmental opportunities, on the one hand, and work engagement and self-perceived employability, on the other. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Hierarchical regression analyses have been used, illustrated by means of quotes – gathered through open questions in the survey – to support the quantitative findings.

A significant interaction effect between calendar age and developmental opportunities in relation to self-perceived employability, but not to work engagement, has been found, revealing stronger positive effects for developmental opportunities among older workers than among younger ones.

The present study provides a starting-point for further research on professional development in other occupational settings.

The use of age-conscious developmental opportunities is a powerful tool in encouraging life-long learning.

Improvement in teachers’ engagement and employability will enhance their performance, will consequently lead to better pupil performance, and will contribute to the wider status of the profession, meaning that more young talented people will seriously consider working in the field and thereby helping to address the urgent need for more teaching staff.

This study increases the knowledge of professional development among teachers and examines to what extent age and proactivity play a role in this regard. The results of the empirical work challenge dominant views on age-related declines and losses, and invite the authors to continue scholarly work in this field focussing upon long-term intra-individual development.

This paper aims to examine the effects of age on counteractive team meeting behaviors (e.g. complaining). Forgiveness is included as a potential buffer against these behaviors. A multilevel model is developed to test individual and team level age effects.

A total of 313 employees nested in 54 teams completed a forgiveness questionnaire and were videotaped during regular team meetings.

Multilevel modeling revealed that both individual age and average team age predicted counteractive team meeting behavior. Team level age diversity was linked to decreased counteractive behavior. Forgiveness moderated the negative link between individual age (but not team average age) and counteractive behavior.

This is the first study examining age effects in the context of counteractive meeting behavior. Although the authors' findings need to be substantiated in further research, they show that older team members engage in significantly more counteractive communication – forgiveness can help alleviate this effect.

Teams with older team members should be sensitized to avoid counteractive behavior. Moreover, team composition should target high age diversity. Managerial interventions should also aim to facilitate forgiveness in the work environment, especially among older team members.

Research on dysfunctional team meeting behavior is sparse, and the role of age effects has not been examined in this context. The authors identify a significant link between age and counteractive meeting behavior. This multilevel model shows differential effects of individual age, team average age, and age diversity on counteractive communication. Furthermore, a buffer against these dysfunctional behaviors is identified: forgiveness.

This paper sets out to examine proactive personality in relation to job demands, job resources and engagement.

The current study employed a two‐wave complete panel study among 794 Dutch government employees. Based upon the Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) model, previous studies, job crafting theories, and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, hypotheses on the associations of proactive personality with job demands, resources, and engagement were developed.

Analyses revealed that proactive personality was associated with an increase in engagement 18 months later. Moreover, proactive employees perceiving high social support reported the highest levels of engagement over time.

A first shortcoming is that proactive personality was only measured at one point in time, which restricted the testing of causal relationships of proactive personality with engagement. Second, this study only measured engagement as outcome measure and third variables may have affected the associations of proactive personality with job demands and resources and engagement. Third, only small effect sizes of proactive personality (and job demands and resources) on engagement over time were found. With regard to theoretical implications, this study suggests a refinement of the JD‐R model by perceiving proactive personality as a personal resource which coincides with job resources such as social support and/or is triggered by (low) external job demands in increasing engagement.

Since this study's findings suggest that proactive personality is a personal resource with beneficial effects on employees' levels of work‐related engagement, employers are advised to promote the behavior expressed by proactive employees. When employees are under challenged due to a low level of quantitative job demands or when they want to optimize their work environment in case of high job demands, proactive personality may have a positive impact on their engagement over time, in particular when combined with high levels of support from their colleagues and supervisor.

This study's value consists of its innovative effort to relate proactive personality to engagement 18 months later. In addition, the longitudinal design of this study made it possible to examine the associations of proactive personality, job demands and resources with engagement over time.

The ongoing demographic changes in many industrialized countries affect managerial decisions in many ways, and require sound knowledge of systematic age differences in central work-related variables. The current paper aims to address age differences in the experience of work-related stress. Based on life-span approaches, the authors focus on age differences in different components of the work-related stress process and meta-analyze existing empirical studies on the relationship between age and short-term indicators of work-related stress (i.e. irritation).

The authors conduct both a literature review and a meta-analysis of age and indicators of work-related stress.

The literature review revealed that age might affect several components of the stress process at work. However, as these effects are partly conflicting, they might nullify each other in the overall relation between age and stress. Indeed, the conducted meta-analysis showed no general correlation between age and irritation as a short-term indicator of work-related stress. Instead, this relationship was significantly moderated by type of occupation and gender.

The meta-analytic results are limited to short-term indicators of stress. Based on both the literature review and the meta-analytical findings, the authors introduce a research agenda for future research, including a call for more thorough research on the whole work-stress process and the integration of life-span theories.

A more differentiated understanding of age differences in different stages of the stress process at work facilitates the implementation of age-differentiated stress prevention and intervention strategies.

This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between age and short-term consequences of work-related stress.

The aim of this paper is to study age-related differences in how perceptions of two forms of organizational justice, i.e. procedural and interactional justice, are related to short (i.e. non-certified) spells and long (i.e. medically certified) spells of sickness absence.

The authors conducted a study on a large sample of Finnish public sector employees (n=37,324), in which they matched employees' 2004 survey data with their records-based sick absences in 2005 and 2006.

The results suggest that age moderates the association between perceptions of procedural justice and long sickness absences after controlling for gender, tenure, occupational group, work unit, job demands and health behaviors. When older employees experienced a high level of procedural justice, they were 12 percent less likely to miss work due to medically certified illnesses. Overall, older employees were less likely to take short, non-certified sickness absences from work. Finally, the results suggest that high-quality relationships with supervisors can prevent both short and long spells of sickness absence at all ages

The study contributes to the literature on age-related differences in the effects of psychosocial workplace conditions (organizational justice) on employee behavior (absenteeism).