A flexible future for older workers?
| Pages | 258-273 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489710172060 |
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| Author | James Arrowsmith,Ann E. McGoldrick |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
26,4
258
A flexible future for older
workers?
James Arrowsmith
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, and
Ann E. McGoldrick
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Introduction
In recent years the traditional notions of employment have increasingly come to
be challenged. Organizational “delayering”, “downsizing” and “re-engineering”
have served to bring into question the relevance of the received assumptions of
hierarchical careers and instead offered the idea of “flexibility” both within and
between different jobs. The nature and pace of these processes of organizational
and job change might have a number of particular implications for older
workers. The fragmentation of the traditional employment relationship may
serve on the one hand to disadvantage older workers through, for example, the
use of age-related exit schemes which may, in turn, serve to compress and
reinforce the potential barriers implicit in the internal age-career timetable. The
general intensification of work and greater technological and other processes of
job-related change might also serve to render the accumulated skills and
experience of older employees inadequate or obsolete.
On the other hand, greater flexibility may present new forms of older worker
recruitment or retention and enable employers and older employees to benefit,
for example, from opportunities for second-career or post-career employment.
The extension of temporary forms of employment contracting might, in
particular, serve to challenge existing employment barriers based on age.
Furthermore, within the organization, an extension of training opportunities
for all employees might become increasingly necessary, given the pace of job
change and as alternative (horizontal and cross-functional) forms of career
development become more widely accepted.
In many ways the rapid and far-reaching nature of these changes have raised
a number of challenges as to how we might have conventionally theorized the
relationship between ageing and work. The original contributions of career
theory, segmentation theory, and human capital theory, for example, have been
characteristically predicated on some form of model of employment stability
and linear progression. However, most of the issues relating to the implications
of organizational change for older workers remain under-researched at both an
Personnel Review, Vol. 26 No. 4,
1997, pp. 258-273. © MCB
University Press, 0048-3486 The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged.
Part of the work was funded by ESRC award number R000221527.
A flexible future
for older
workers?
259
empirical and conceptual level. A brief summary of the relevant literature is
outlined below.
Career theory
Career theory draws on developmental psychology in the relation of work
motivation and performance to age-related stages in the human life cycle[1], but
it also examines occupational structures as determinants of individual
career[2]. It suggests, for example, that situational factors relating to existing
age distributions, career structures and management systems can provide a
context for the reinforcement of attitudinal and objective age discrimination[3, 4].
Traditional career theory has been characterized, however, as a simplistic
derivative of the early work of Erikson[5] and current organizational practice
may not fit easily with the conventionally postulated linear models[6]. The
processes of organizational change referred to above challenge the foundations
on which career theory is based[7,8] and what may be required is a move away
from generalization to organizational specification[9]. This could incorporate
an examination of the specific “constructional climbing frame” with more
emphasis on internal flexibility[10], including the possibility of lateral
movement[11] and “second careers”[12].
Segmentation theory
Of particular relevance here is the role of internal labour markets (ILMs) in
structuring recruitment, promotion, training and exit practices in larger
organizations[13]. Within the literature labour markets are typically
differentiated into primary and secondary sectors[14]. Within the former, ILMs
are maintained in order to retain and develop firm specific skills and to
establish worker loyalty through the construction of security and dependency
within a long-term employment relationship. This introduces a degree of
closure to older workers as entry to ILMs is focused at relatively junior
positions and for younger people with a view to longer-term development and
succession. In contrast, secondary labour markets are characterized by lower
skill requirements and so can be managed on a shorter-term basis with more
competitively open access.
The segmentation literature has been the subject of much methodological
criticism[15,16] and for its erroneous dismissal of “atypical” forms of
employment as inferior “marginal jobs”[17]. It is also open to the same
criticisms of its relevance as those which apply to career theory as traditional
bureaucratic control systems have increasingly given way to a technical control
of labour through work intensification, merit payments, employment flexibility,
and a more direct and immediate direction of work tasks. Although the
increasing disorganization of work has not yet been adequately theorized[18],
within limits the flexible firm typology may be a useful framework to re-specify
segmentation and to interpret work changes at the level of the firm[19]. Future
research must take account, however, of employee motivations as well as
demand-side factors[20].
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