Career progression in older managers
| Pages | 309-321 |
| Published date | 20 April 2013 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425451311320495 |
| Date | 20 April 2013 |
| Author | Dianne Bown‐Wilson,Emma Parry |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Career progression in older
managers
Dianne Bown-Wilson and Emma Parry
Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore what drives UK managers aged over 50 to continue
progressing in their careers rather than retiring, and their perceptions of career progression at a time
in life when opportunities for further promotion may have ceased. It examines subjectively significant
personal and organizational influences on career progression and the extent to which older managers
perceive that motivation for career progression changes over the career.
Design/methodology/approach – The researchadopts a qualitative, inductiveapproach, comprising
semi-structuredinterviews with 27 male and13 female managers, aged 50 and over, from two large,UK
financial services organizations.
Findings – The findings show that motivation for career progression in managers aged over 50 is
driven by individually diverse patterns of career drivers, personal and work-related influences, and
attitudes towards career opportunities. These can be classified into four different orientations towards
future career progression, pre- and post-retirement.
Originality/value – The study contributes to knowledge about subjective psychological mobility in
late managerial careers and the balance which individuals maintain between organizational and
personal aspects of their career. It demonstrates that motivational drivers of career progression
are perceived to change over the career and that perceptions of what constitutes career progression are
linked to an individual’s past, current and predicted future career experiences, in some cases extending
past the traditional retirement transition.
Keywords Managers, Career development, Motivation (psychology), Career progression,
Career motivation, Older workers, United Kingdom
Paper type Research p aper
Introduction
As the abolition of the UK default retirement age means that older employees may
work on indefinitely, understanding motivation for career progression in particular
groups of older workers is now a pressing issue. Employers are faced increasingly with
the need to manage the careers of older employees to maintain engagement and
productivity; some employers also face the issue of how to prevent key older employees
from leaving the workplace prematurely taking with them ir replaceable skills,
knowledge and experience. This requires employers to understand what motivates
career progression in different types of older workers and what they perceive “career
progression” constitutes at a time when opportunities for further promotion may have
ceased, developing an associated range of policies and incentives (Patricks on and
Ranzijn, 2006).
Compounding this challenge is the fact that economic turbulence and increasing
globalization have led to the erosion of traditional career structures. Instead of
reflecting an employer-controlled upward trajectory, careers have increasingly become
the responsibility of individuals to the extent that progress is primarily linked to each
employee’s psychological drivers and their ability to engineer and manage transitions
across boundaries relating to job, role and employer (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1996).
Individuals’ perceptions of their career, including contextual factors, are now equally,
if not more, important than objective factors (Hall and Mirvis, 1995). In response to
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Employee Relations
Vol.35 No. 3, 2013
pp. 309-321
rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425451311320495
309
Older managers
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