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This study aims to test a model of the relationships among older workers' propensity to engage in development activities (development orientation), their perceptions of the development opportunities associated with their job (job development climate), their commitment to their organization, and their intention to remain with their organization.

Separate questionnaires were completed by 395 individuals aged 50 to 70, who were in their career job and 195 individuals aged 50 to 70 who were employed in a bridge job. Both questionnaires included measures of development orientation, job development climate, affective commitment and intention to remain as well as individual characteristics and organizational characteristics.

The findings supported the proposed model in that development orientation was positively related to job development climate which, in turn, was positively related to affective commitment and affective commitment was positively related to intention to remain with the organization. There were both similarities and differences in the patterns of relationships for career‐job and bridge‐job respondents.

The question of causality cannot be determined because of the cross‐sectional research design.

To create a supportive development climate and retain older workers, employers need to foster older workers' development orientation and ensure that their work assignments provide opportunities to learn new knowledge and skills.

There is little empirical research addressing issues related to the development and retention of older workers. No previous studies have investigated both development orientation and job development climate in the context of older workers.

Extant studies of the market orientation of service firms rarely consider the contribution of individual employees to the realization of this orientation. Existing scales that measure market orientation reveal the perceptions of a key informant about the dominant orientation within the firm. These scales do not measure the willingness of employees to act in a market‐oriented way. This paper aims to report the development of a multi‐dimensional scale of individual market‐oriented behavior.

The scale development process included identification of items from focus groups with employees of a major Canadian financial services firm and the market orientation literature. A pretest with marketing practitioners and academics helped to purify and reduce the number of items. Finally, a sample of North American financial services employees responded to the items in a web‐based questionnaire.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the responses confirmed the presence of a single latent construct with three dimensions: information acquisition, information sharing and strategic response, measured by 20 items.

Although scale validation included both qualitative and quantitative tests that triangulated the opinions of multiple stakeholders in the service delivery chain, future research must also test the predictive validity of this scale.

Such research is important to increase understanding of how service organizations foster market orientation. The I‐MARKOR augments the organizational scorecard approach with individual level measurement.

The scale provides a method to assess differences between individuals within an organization, enabling empirical research on differences between departments, roles, training and other characteristics that may influence the extent to which an individual performs market‐oriented behaviors.

This study aims to employ a resource‐oriented theoretical perspective to examine retirees' desire to return to their former organization.

Using a cross‐sectional field study design, data were collected from 243 retirees under 65 years of age who had been retired from a career job less than ten years.

Regression results indicate that retirees who had experienced financial and pervasive role loss as well as retirees who perceived a higher fit with their former organization and the availability of desired job role options expressed significantly greater interest in returning. Retirees who experienced gains in leaving work as well as gains in their life satisfaction following retirement reported significantly less interest in returning to their former organization.

The cross‐sectional design and self‐report data create a potential for bias. Even though the findings are based on respondents' “interest” in returning to their former organization, it is not known if they actually did return.

Programs should focus on creating an environment that values older workers, and provides them with opportunities such as mentoring other workers.

Policy changes are needed to ensure that returning to work following retirement results in resource gains and not resource losses.

This study uses resource theory with a diverse sample of retirees and considers their desire to return to their original employers, thus adding value to human resources and management who wish to retain or re‐engage their own knowledgeable retirees.

It is ironic that in stressful economic times, when new ideas and positive behaviors could be most valuable, employees may not speak up, leading to reduced employee participation, less organizational learning, less innovation and less receptiveness to change. The supervisor is the organization's first line of defense against a culture of silence and towards a culture of openness. The purpose of this paper is to ask what helps supervisors to hear prosocial voice and notice defensive silence.

The authors conducted a cross‐sectional field study of 142 supervisors.

The results indicate that prosocial voice is increased by supervisor tension and trust in employees, while defensive silence is increased by supervisor tension but reduced by unionization of employees and trust in employees. This indicates that, as hypothesized by others, voice and silence are orthogonal and not opposites of the same construct.

The data are measured at one point in time, and further longitudinal study would be helpful to further understand the phenomena.

This research highlights the potential for supervisors in stressful situations to selectively hear voice and silence from employees.

This research also has implications for supervisors who work in a unionized environment. Although seemingly counter‐intuitive, there is a value to employee unionization in terms of either reducing the level of actual defensive silence, or at least reducing supervisors’ perceptions of defensive silence.

The paper adds to our knowledge of prosocial voice and defensive silence by testing supervisors’ perceptions of these constructs during difficult times. It provides valuable empirical insights to a literature dominated by conceptual non‐empirical papers. Limited research on silence might reflect how difficult it is to study such an ambiguous and passive construct as silence (often simply viewed as a lack of speech). The paper contributes also to trust literature by identifying its role in increasing supervisor's perceptions of prosocial voice and reducing perceptions of defensive silence.

The purpose of this study is to identify antecedents of intentions to unretire among a group of retirees that included both those who had not returned to the workforce since their retirement and those who had previously unretired.

A cross‐sectional survey collected data from 460 recent retirees between the ages of 50 and 70.

Results of hierarchical regression indicated that retirees are more likely to remain retired if they feel financially secure and have a positive retirement experience. Conversely, they are more likely to intend to return to the workforce if they experience financial worries, wish to upgrade their skills or miss aspects of their former jobs.

Aging boomers who anticipate early retirement have created a dwindling labor pool. Simultaneously, the global pension crisis has impacted on the financial decisions of retirees. A trend to abolish mandatory retirement and/or increase mandatory age in various countries provides individuals with more freedom in their retirement decisions. Accordingly, managers must be creative in their HR planning strategies to retain or recruit skilled retirees.

Previous research has addressed retirement as a final stage, however, given simultaneous global demographic changes and economic concerns, this study provides new knowledge regarding the factors that push and pull retirees to participate in the labor market.

Resource constraints in the Canadian publicly funded healthcare system have created a need for more volunteer leaders to effectively manage other volunteers. Self-concept theory has been conceptualized and applied within a volunteer context, and the views of healthcare stakeholders, such as volunteers, volunteer leaders, and supervisors, triangulated to form an understanding of the attitudes and behaviors of volunteer leaders. We propose that leaders are differentiated from others by how they view their roles in the organization and their ability to make a difference in these roles. This interpretation can be informed by self-concept theory because each individual's notion of self-concept influences how employees see themselves, how they react to experiences, and how they allow these experiences to shape their motivation. A small case study profiles a volunteer leader self-concept that includes a proactive, learning-oriented attitude, capitalizing on significant prior work experience to fulfill a sense of obligation to the institution and its patients, and demands a high level of respect from paid employees.