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We develop a conceptual model, based on person-environment fit theory, which explains how employee age affects occupational strain and well-being. We begin by explaining how age directly affects different dimensions of objective and subjective P-E fit. Next, we illustrate how age can moderate the relationship between objective P-E fit and subjective P-E fit. Third, we discuss how age can moderate the relationships between P-E fit, on one hand, and occupational strain and well-being on the other. Fourth, we explain how age can impact occupational strain and well-being directly independent of P-E fit. The chapter concludes with implications for future research and practice.

The shrinking supply of labour, the rising expectations of new entrants into the workforce, the trend towards corporate downsizing, and the growth in the number of plateaued middle managers will require corporations to develop innovative ways of recruiting, selecting, training, and developing new employees by the end of the century. Companies will need to be more effective in recruiting and maintaining a culturally diverse workforce, in managing new recruits in “flat track” careers, and in using plateaued middle managers more extensively as mentors.

The main goal of this article is to present a new taxonomy of contingent employment that better represents the wide variety of part‐time, temporary, and contract employment arrangements that have emerged since Feldman's review.

Reviews the literature over the past 15 years.

The paper suggests that contingent work arrangements can be arrayed along three dimensions: time, space, and the number/kind of employers. In addition, analysis of the recent research on contingent employment should be expanded to include worker timeliness, responsiveness, job embeddedness, citizenship behaviours, quality of work, and social integration costs.

The article suggests that a wider range of individual differences (including education, race, citizenship, career stage, and rational demography) all serve to moderate the relationships between different kinds of contingent work arrangements and outcome variables.

In light of significant changes over the past decade in the nature of the workforce, the workplace, and retirement itself, this article examines the factors that predispose employees to retire. The study uses a sample of older workers who had attended pre‐retirement planning sessions open to employees over age 45. Results suggest that employment status of spouse (rather than marital status per se), continuous years of service (rather than salary), the physical demands of the job (rather than overall health), and certainty about the plans for retirement (rather than the content of those plans) are significantly related to intentions to retire.

We propose that off-the-job embeddedness (OTJE) be reconceptualized as a separate and distinct, albeit related, construct from job embeddedness. We conceptualize OTJE as the totality of outside-work forces which keep an individual bound to his/her current geographical area and argue that this construct includes important factors which do not fall under the umbrella of “community embeddedness.” Moreover, we propose that these outside-work forces may embed individuals in their jobs either directly or indirectly (through the perceived or expressed preferences of spouses, children, and extended family). This paper identifies the key components of OJTE, addresses the measurement of OTJE, explains the relationships between job embeddedness and OTJE (and their respective components), highlights how OTJE can either amplify or counteract the effects of job embeddedness, and illustrates the direct and indirect effects of OTJE on both work-related and personal outcomes.

Over the last ten years, increasing attention has been given to employees' displays of emotions to customers during service transactions and particularly to how organisations try to control these emotional displays (Adelmann, 1989; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987, 1989; Wharton & Erickson, 1993). The act of expressing organisationally‐desired emotions during service interactions has been labelled emotional labour (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983). The issue in emotional labour research which has received the most focus has been “emotional dissonance”, that is, the state of discomfort generated in employees when they have to express emotions which they do not genuinely feel (Middleton, 1989). In large part, this attention to emotional dissonance has been based on the potential negative consequences that emotional dissonance can have for workers psychological well being (Hochschild, 1983; Erickson, 1991; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987; Wharton, 1993). This study seeks to extend previous empirical research on when emotional dissonance is most likely to result in these negative consequences and, especially, the importance of role internalisation as a mediating variable in the emotional dissonance‐psychological well‐being relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships of personality traits and interpersonal relationships with vocational indecision and the mediating role that identity construction plays in the development of those relationships.

Data are collected from 202 college students in Hong Kong at four points in time over a five‐month period.

Personality traits (e.g. locus of control and positive affectivity) and interpersonal relationships (e.g. with parents and peers) are related to the intensity of college students' search for their overall identity, positive anticipation of the work role, and level of identification with the student role. These role identification processes, in turn, are related to lower levels of vocational indecision. The results here support the idea that identity variables do serve as mediators of those relationships.

A more complete identity approach to studying vocational indecision that focuses on both vocational and non‐vocational identities is warranted. Cultural differences in vocational indecision are in need of more research attention, too.

In addition to the common practice of assessing the development of students' vocational interests, another way to prepare individuals for the start of their careers is to assess the development of multiple role identities.

This paper extends the vocational indecision literature by examining how the search for identity, the degree of positive anticipation of the work role, and the development of identification with the student role may mediate the effects of personal dispositions and interpersonal relationships on vocational indecision.

The dual forces of an increasing dependency ratio and lower labor market participation on the part of mature individuals does not bode well for the American and European Communities. To begin to better understand such macro influences, changing demographic trends in the U.S. and European community with regard to the aging population and workforce participation are reviewed. In addition, recent research which continues to dispel the myth of a negative relationship between age and job performance is reviewed. A more informative way of looking at possible relationships between age and job performance is presented. A variety of contingent work arrangements and flexible employment policies are reviewed as a potential solution to the decreased supply of skilled labor for employers and the need for continued income and community involvement on the part of mature individuals. In addition, a call for a redefinition of how we currently view retirement is sounded. We conclude with recommendations for both employers and mature individuals on dealing with the issues presented.

Research on employee mobility has proliferated in the past four decades across four research traditions: Economics, sociology, management, and organizational behavior/human resource management. Despite significant overlap in interest and focus, these four streams of research have evolved independent from each other, resulting in a structural divide. We provide a detailed account of the research on employee mobility and the structural divide across disciplines. We document that the payoff from this profusion of research and increasing interest has been disappointing, as reflected in the limited number of cross-disciplinary citations, even among common topics of interest. However, our analysis also provides some encouraging signs in the form of specific journals and individuals who provide a bridge for cross-disciplinary fertilization.

The present paper examines the effects of two decision‐framing inductions on young adults' set of career options: first, whether young adults use abilities or interests as the grounds for their vocational choices and, second, whether young adults approach the decision‐making task by including all career options to which they feel positively or by eliminating all career options to which they feel negatively.

A 2 × 2 experimental design was used to collect data from a diverse group of college undergraduates.

The results suggest that individuals who choose careers on the basis of skills and who use the inclusion decision‐making procedure are significantly more likely to narrow down their sets of career options.

The paper also suggests that Holland's model of vocational choice (RIASEC) may be differentially useful in guiding students to appropriate vocations for themselves. Students with a “social” profile, for example, have a much larger and more diffuse set of career options available to them than students with “realistic” or “investigative” profiles.

The findings here suggest that the prevalent practice of focusing students' attention on finding activities they like may be less successful in helping students identify appropriate careers than focusing students' attention on their skills and abilities.

The paper addresses a career decision‐making phenomenon that has received increasing attention in the press and among educators.