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As the global workforce ages, organizations face unprecedented challenges, especially managing effective communication between generations. The phenomenon of middle ageism (i.e. discriminating against middle-aged employees based on their age) has become more prevalent. The authors examined how contextual settings and communication affect attitudes toward middle-aged employees and hiring intentions.

Data were collected from 537 employees from various organizations, via questionnaires. The moderated mediation model was analyzed using Hayes' PROCESS models.

Results showed that attitudes toward middle-aged employees mediated the relationship between social climate of shared codes and language and hiring intentions. Social climate was positively related to attitudes toward their adaptability, but negatively to attitudes toward their ability. Also, decision-makers' own perceived employability moderated the relationship between attitudes toward employees' adaptability and hiring intentions, and the indirect relationship between social climate and hiring intentions.

Since age diversity is expected to become one of the most dominant diversity classifications in the very near future, coping with middle ageism constitutes a growing challenge for managers and HR staff. The findings indicate that in order to enhance sustainable employment and prevent discrimination, organizations need not only maintain a supportive climate for older employees, as an affirmative action, but also ensure better communication in terms of sharing codes and language that enhance positive attitudes toward middle-aged colleagues.

In an era where diversity and inclusion dominate human resource management decision making, this study contributes to the literature on the underexplored domain of age diversity.

Research on agile software development (ASD) has so far primarily focused on processes and tools. Recently, researchers have started to investigate the social dimensions of ASD. The authors contribute to this and examine the largely invisible psychological factor of age stereotypes as one important social dimension of ASD. Driven by demographic change, employees of different age groups will need to work closely together in ASD in the future. However, age stereotypes can hinder many aspects of communication, cooperation and coordination in these self-managed teams. The purpose of this paper is to identify and differentiate age stereotypes in ASD.

A quantitative survey at the individual level was conducted with 464 employees in two software development companies. The authors developed an age stereotype model for ASD and developed two scales to measure performance expectations (PEs) in ASD.

Employees in ASD show a bias in general PEs, favoring middle-aged employees over both younger and older employees. The perceived PE of a developer decreases over working life. Furthermore, the data show a complex interplay of age and job role in both the research participants and the group evaluated. Younger developers hold the strongest negative age stereotypes and older developers suffer most from stereotypes.

Management should enact formal or informal measures against stereotypes when an older or younger employee joins a team of members of other age groups, or when a new team is formed. In addition, the authors propose human resources to create permeable career paths.

The study extends the stereotype content model by adding additional age groups and including job role as a moderating variable. It identifies obstacles in daily employee interactions in agile development, and proposes ways of incorporating invisible psychological aspects in ASD-specific theories.

Looks at the long recession the Japanese economy suffered in the 1990s and its ramifications on the employment situation in Japanese corporations. Describes, in general, the current trends in human resource management in corporate Japan which have long‐term implications for management development. In particular, focuses its attention on those white‐collar employees in older age groups who find themselves “trapped” in a “career plateau”. Sees their plight as part of the necessary historic process in a move towards a new corporate society in Japan.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether the age-productivity curve is different for low-waged and high-waged employees.

Productivity growth is decomposed at the firm level into contributions by hired, separated and staying workers. Based on a matched employer-employee database of Estonian firms from 2006 to 2014 and considering the age as well as wages of employees, a panel data model with fixed effects is constructed to show the relative productivity of each cohort of employees.

High-waged employees appeared to be relatively more productive than low-waged employees and middle-aged were more productive than young or old employees. However, the productivity difference between young and old employees was not statistically significant. The age-productivity curve of high-waged employees appeared to be flatter than that of low-waged employees. Only in knowledge intensive services were the low-waged old employees statistically significantly less productive than high-waged old employees. In the manufacturing industry, the young were more productive than in services, in knowledge intensive services the old were less productive than in traditional services.

The productivity of employees is only analysed for cohorts of employees.

Employers can be encouraged to hire older employees because old employees are shown to remain at least as productive as young employees.

The decomposition of labour productivity at the firm level is further developed, as the statistical difference between the productivity of different groups of employees is analysed.

The purpose of this paper is to test the cognitive construct of optimism (positive future outcome expectancies) and the age-gender differences in Indian sample.

The sample consists of 363 older, middle-aged and younger male and female employees. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey based research design.

Results revealed that middle-aged employees have high levels of optimism as compared to the old age and younger employees. Further, the males reflected high optimism levels in comparison to female employees in middle and old aged adult employees, whereas females have higher optimism level in younger age in Indian select organisations.

The study suggests that the continuous changes in the lifespan lead to changes in one’s attitude and hence results in behavioural changes. The research indicates that optimism should be cultivated in the individuals by providing training and development to promote the competence and skill-building events which would help in enhancing the productivity resulting in better understanding of the scenario at workplace.

The work supplements the existing literature on positive attitude or outcome expectancies by adding to the lifespan development theory.

Adaptation to the requirements of digital economy is especially difficult for older workers, which is a challenge for today’s organizations due to workforce shrinking and ageing. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how it is possible to develop older employees’ potential in technology use in the business environment.

The authors examined how employees at various age perceive barriers during enterprise system (ES) adoption and use. This exploratory study is based on grounded theory and draws from the opinions of 187 Polish ES practitioners.

With age, emphasis on employees’ perception of mandatory ICT implementation projects is shifting from technology to people-related considerations. For older employees, job security and workload appear the most critical issues in such projects. Age-diverse collaboration appears necessary to address the problems posed by technology-related and demographic changes.

The findings imply that incorporating multiple stakeholder perspectives and age-related considerations into research on ICT adoption appears essential.

ICT adoption in the business environment can be successfully supported by age-balanced team building, cooperation between younger and older employees, and age-adjusted change management initiatives.

Supporting older employees during the implementation of mandatory business software should embrace reducing their negative attitudes to ICT-induced change by minimizing their perception of job insecurity.

Unlike many prior studies, the current research places age in the central role and discusses not only how it is possible to support older employees, but also how to leverage their potential in the process of ICT adoption and use in a mandatory setting.

Researchers in the field of occupational stress and well-being are increasingly interested in the role of emotion regulation in the work context. Emotion regulation has also been widely investigated in the area of lifespan developmental psychology, with findings indicating that the ability to modify one’s emotions represents a domain in which age-related growth is possible. In this chapter, we integrate the literatures on aging, emotion regulation, and occupational stress and well-being. To this end, we review key theories and empirical findings in each of these areas, summarize existing research on age, emotion regulation, and stress and well-being at work, and develop a conceptual model on how aging affects emotion regulation and the stress process in work settings to guide future research. According to the model, age will affect (1) what kinds of affective work events are encountered and how often, (2) the appraisal of and initial emotional response to affective work events (emotion generation), and (3) the management of emotions and coping with affective work events (emotion regulation). The model has implications for researchers and practitioners who want to understand and facilitate successful emotion regulation and stress reduction in the workplace among different age groups.

Middle-aged and elderly users become an important group on short-video platforms, however, the research on determinants of their video-creating intention is limited. Based on lifespan development theories, this study examines the impact of aging experiences on their video-creating intention, considering internal generative motivations as mediators and age as a moderator.

To test this study’s hypotheses, survey data from 321 Chinese middle-aged and elderly short-video users were collected and partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to analyze these data.

Middle-aged and elderly users' aging experiences of social loss and personal growth are positively related to their video-creating intention. Aging experiences (i.e. physical loss, social loss, and personal growth) are positively related to internal generative motivations (i.e. need to be needed and symbolic immortality), and need to be needed is positively related to video-creating intention. Via the mediation of need to be needed, physical loss and personal growth are indirectly positively related to video-creating intention. Personal growth strengthens the relationship between physical loss and symbolic immortality, but weakens the associations of social loss with need to be needed and symbolic immortality. Age weakens the relationship between symbolic immortality and video-creating intention.

This study is the first wave to introduce and integrate lifespan theories such as selective optimization with compensation model, socioemotional selectivity theory, and generativity theory to explore the impacts of aging experiences on middle-aged and elderly users' video-creating intention by considering generativity motivations as mediators and age as a moderator.

In this study the authors aim to explore the impact of customer misbehavior on frontline employees and managers and to elucidate the management tactics and strategies that managers employ in an attempt to minimize the impact of customer misbehavior on the workplace.

Following a discussion of the research design and methodology employed, the findings of 88 in-depth interviews are presented.

These data suggest that customer misbehavior impacts on frontline employees, managers, and managerial strategies. Three main effects of customer misbehavior on customer-contact employees are uncovered: physiological, cognitive, and attitudinal. These are connected with four main management challenges: conflicting pressures, recruitment and retention, counseling and motivation, and time expenditure. Finally, data analysis finds evidence of six main ways in which managers attempted to reduce or to alleviate harmful customer misbehavior: selective recruitment, changes to training and induction procedures, enhanced rewards, work-team design, increase counseling, and alterations to the servicescape.

The authors recommend that practitioners undertake a misbehavior audit that explores not only the extent of customer misbehavior but also the mechanisms, systems, and procedures the organization has for identifying, recording, and attempting to minimize the effects of dysfunctional customer behavior.

This study contributes insights into how customer-contact personnel and managers are both affected and cope with customer misbehavior. These insights are helpful for service managers faced with customer misbehavior and academicians interested in how employees respond to contemporary customers.

The present study investigates the relationship between two career‐related variables and occupational expertise of higher‐level employees from large working organisations in three different age groups. The factors in question are: total number of jobs that have been performed; and the average period spent in each job. Survey data from 420‐higher level employees and 224 direct supervisors have been utilised. We may conclude that it is not experience as such that counts for the development of occupational expertise. We assume that it is rather the allocation of different jobs that determines competence growth. Results are considered in relation to possible explanations of the outcomes.