Citation
Ruel, S., Aaltio, I., Römer-Paakkanen, T. and Ozkazanc-Pan, B. (2022), "Guest editorial: Meanings, contexts and future of ageing studies: intersections of age and ageing with organizations", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 161-170. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-06-2022-996
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited
Introduction to special issue
The intersection of age and ageing with organizations has not been extensively addressed in academic literature. There are studies published on age/ageing and motivation to continue working (e.g. Kooij et al., 2008), multiple jeopardy (King, 1988), such as age intersections with gender, race, sexual orientation, sexual preference, etc. (e.g. Riach et al., 2014), and discrimination and discriminatory practices in organizations (e.g. Duncan and Loretto, 2004; James and Wooten, 2006). More often than not, however, the tone and the approach taken by age and ageing studies replicate determinism and negative connotations that are associated with the elderly (Salminen et al., 2018) or that speak to self-evidence with respect to age and ageing in the workplace (Nelson, 2005). Furthermore, age and ageing in organizations are reflected as a grand narrative which essentializes and universalizes the older worker into one stable, stereotypical understanding or compares this older worker to a younger worker as if this younger individual is the norm to follow within an organizational context.
Tied to these under-developed ontological and epistemological notions of the older worker in organizations, the question of how to surface critical meanings around age and ageing, beyond chronological, time-dependent assumptions, remains an unanswered area across the literature. Having said this, there are interesting methodologies that have been used in the past (e.g. Jack et al., 2016; Tomlinson and Colgan, 2014), and there are interesting debates surrounding age, ageing and organizations that underscore a need for discourses and the discursive nature of age and ageing in organizations to be folded into our knowledge (Aaltio et al., 2017; Thomas et al., 2014). Furthermore, there are multiple reflexive subjectivities (Hayes et al., 2016) that are context-specific (Hulko, 2009), along with materially-discursive constructions of age and ageing that are possible (Hearn and Parkin, 2021). This special issue focuses on the critical qualitative methodological paths that explore this intersection of age and ageing with organizations and surfaces some critical meanings around this intersection.
Literature around age and ageing and organizations
The dominant way to understand and conceptualize age in the academic literature has been to embrace a chronological approach (Aaltio et al., 2014; Fineman, 2014; Irni, 2009). Questions related to age and ageing are usually quantitatively oriented in broader society and in a majority of the management and organizational studies (MOS) literature. Case in point, the United Nations, in 2017, embraced this chronological approach to the question of global ‘old age’ [1] and ageing populations. They found that there were 962 million people over the age of 60 years old in 2017, underlining that this part of the population is twice as large as it was in 1980 (United Nations, 2017). Developed regions – Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (United Nations, 2017) – were also targeted in this study, underscoring that an increase of 38% in the number of older persons would be seen by 2050. Developing regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia were projected to triple, double, and double, respectively, in the number of older people (United Nations, 2017).
Beyond this deterministic construction of what ‘old age’ means, definitions and understanding of age and ageing can be viewed as culturally bound, accentuating that various societies do not address age and ageing similarly. Asian cultures, as Leung (2000) found, value older individuals and ageing more than Western cultures. However, as Chiu et al. (2001) discuss, Chinese culture may value elders but Hong Kong, in particular, has been slower than the UK with respect to equal opportunity legislation when it comes to age and ageing in organizations. As seen in North America and Europe, Western cultures have been recognized as adopting ambivalence towards the value of ageing employees (Schalk et al., 2010). This type of culture, on the one hand, emphasizes the need for workers to stay in work-life longer while on the other hand, ageing employees are frequently the primary victims of downsizing or restructuring (Buyens et al., 2009). The Western cultural focus has also been on different practices for managing the older workforce, including leadership and human resource management (HRM) (Walker, 2005). In these models, Western-based organizations are seen as black boxes, and older employees are viewed as passive and without having a voice regarding their age and ageing experiences while in the workforce.
Issues surrounding age and ageing are finding a place among diversity management scholars, including those with interests in gender (e.g. Irni, 2009), Indigenous cultural backgrounds (e.g. Price et al., 2017) and other typologies and their crossings (e.g. Aaltio et al., 2016). Age management or “age-aware” HRM and sustainable HRM practices have also been closely related to organizational corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (e.g. Ehnert and Harry, 2012). The impact of reproducing stereotypes of the ageing worker (e.g. Brought et al., 2011; Hedge et al., 2006; Nelson, 2005), workplace efficiency, career development, retirement policies, experience (e.g. Kanfer and Ackerman, 2004) and training needs (e.g. Ilmarinen, 2006) have also been the subject of study. Equity between different age groups and talent management issues are also a concern (e.g. Cook and Rougette, 2017).
The literature does recognize that ‘old age’ may bring valuable expertise and wisdom, which has been referred to as crystallized intelligence (Kanfer and Ackerman, 2004). On the other hand, stereotypes related to older employees include being viewed as less productive, less healthy and less able to cope with change (Brought et al., 2011; Hedge et al., 2006). These stereotypes and the accompanying discursive labels position the older workforce as the Other within change initiatives in organizations; experience and wisdom, which some may perceive positively, can nonetheless suggest sedentary and established qualities rather than an ability to respond in new and innovative ways to radical and incremental change. Although some research demonstrates that the assumption of a general decline with age is simplistic, stereotypical assumptions tend to continue to be adopted (Fineman, 2014), including the use of secondary baby talk when speaking to older individuals (Nelson, 2005).
Contributions to intersections of age and ageing with organizations studies
The initial call to this special issue invited submissions that embrace age and ageing at the intersection of the organization beyond statistical and similar ‘what’ or ‘how many’ types of methodological approaches. We specifically asked authors to investigate, through a critically diverse qualitative approach (Bleijenbergh et al., 2018), the meanings, contexts and future of age and ageing by moving away from a deterministic number for ‘old age’ while moving toward innovative discursive understandings of the diverse older worker. We did acknowledge the United Nations (2017) statement that the global population is ageing at disproportionate rates across what they categorized as developing and developed countries. We also acknowledged the burgeoning menopause literature (e.g. Brewis et al., 2017; Jack et al., 2018), which focuses on older women in the workforce and on what organizational policies should be put in place to support these individuals. There were, furthermore, intersectional approaches (Cho et al., 2013; McCall, 2005) that we believe needed to be drawn out from age and ageing experiences in organizations. In line with Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management journal's goals, we sought contributions to embrace broadly critical methodological approaches and their development and to the subjective and context-specific issues in research practice that are pertinent to qualitative approaches. The submissions received and the subsequent invitations to the review process kept these goals at the forefront. We also promoted submissions to review that exposed and explored productive meanings and meaning-making around age and ageing at the intersection with organizations.
As we progressed through the review process, with the support of many anonymous reviewers to whom we are indebted, we were encouraged by the potential for this growing field of research. At the same time, we were surprised by several unforeseen areas that came to the surface. One such area was that the notions of job, work, occupation and career(s) are broad to consider in light of the intersection of age and ageing with organizations. When the meanings of age and ageing are interwoven into these various concepts that represent ‘work’, the movement of older individuals with-in and with-out organizations appear to play an increasing role in exposing them to a spectrum of power relations. For example, ageing individuals may circulate between paid and non-paid work, more commonly referred to as being ‘non-working’. Such voluntary work can be an avenue for older individuals to engage with, after the North American and European prescribed retirement age of 65 (Hearn and Parkin, 2021; Schalk et al., 2010), and can add interesting avenues to the agentic construction of non-linear careers as seen in entrepreneurship and in continuing to work beyond retirement. We were also surprised to find that this area of research in age and ageing at the intersection of organizations does not appear (yet) to engage with the deconstruction of essentialist definitions of age. The authors of the manuscripts that are part of this special issue are pulling at the roots of such essentialist definitions; however, more work needs to be done so that more inclusive practices can be created and put in place in contexts that are struggling with age-limiting structural barriers. Finally, while we expected negative stereotypes and myths surrounding the older worker, we found it interesting the depth that these stereotypes and myths worked at. To see them all gathered in one special issue, across multiple contexts, pushed us to continue to work at completing this special issue despite numerous and significant personal and professional challenges. Ageism permeates the everyday work of individuals in organizations and appears as an acceptable discriminatory practice, and it must be undone.
The manuscripts that our reviewers chose to be part of this special issue are grouped across four context-dependent themes: (1) Home care services/Sheltered accommodations/Nursing; (2) Employers' perspectives; (3) Entrepreneurs and self-employment; and (4) Viewpoint essay. Across these four themes, various ontological constructions of the ageing worker in organizations are being used or considered. Also, all the authors embrace a broadly critical approach to age and ageing and the meanings associated with these notions. The multi-disciplinary approaches to narrative analysis, thematic analysis, and mixed methods used by the authors demonstrate that age and ageing research can benefit from such in-depth interpretations and understandings via various discursive approaches. The following presents a summary of each manuscript that is part of this special issue, outlining some essential information for the reader in such a way to invite them to dig deeper into these contributions to age and ageing at the intersection of organizations.
Theme 1: Home care services/Sheltered accommodations/Nursing
We start this special issue with Kristiina Niemi-Kaija's research, “Aesthetic wisdom of older workers”. This study uses organizational aesthetics, where a philosophical perspective supports emotional capital and emotional-related goals. Emotions and feelings are not rationalized away, and so the study of older workers in the context of municipal homecare services and sheltered accommodations elevates the human in us all. This research aims to surface, in the author's words, “the multidimensional value of older workers” that can be an aesthetic force that brings all workers together. At the heart of Niemi-Kaija's work is a productive view of the meaning and value of the older workforce in organizations. Using a thematic analysis of collected stories, the author finds and discusses three categories of ageing wisdom that support a focused sensitivity: caring wisdom, graceful wisdom, joyful wisdom. This is a timely piece given not only the challenges faced in Finland to reform municipal health services and the increase in nursing staff leaving their profession but also provided the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on healthcare workers around the world. The importance of celebrating emotional capital as a power to bring this workforce together is a central contribution of this research.
Hanna Salminen, Monika E. von Bonsdorff, Deborah McPhee and Pia Heilmann's study, “The extended late career phase – examining senior nursing professionals”, continues to expand on the ideas of late-career experiences in nursing and healthcare introduced in Niemi-Kaija's (this issue) paper. With this research, the authors turn to the career literature, particularly career ecosystems, to apply the sustainable career model to investigate late-career narratives from Finnish senior nursing professionals. They consider context-dependent narratives, including mental health and the physical work required in this type of career, and how these issues can be barriers to working later in life among the 22 research participants, ranging in age from 50–64 years old and 17 women and five men. They also uncover narratives such as the want for flexible work arrangements, career progression, the importance of a positive workplace, continuous learning and the possibilities for entrepreneurship that can contribute to continuing to work in the nursing profession until and beyond state-defined retirement. The authors answered our call to develop a more nuanced understanding of late career, including organizational practices and subjective, agentic individual aspirations towards achieving a multi-level career ecosystem.
Theme 2: Employers' context
The next manuscript is an important addition to the literature on employers' perspectives on extending employees' working lives. Hila Axelrad, Alexandra Kalev and Noah Lewin-Epstein's “How do employers think about older workers?” explore attitudes and behaviours in Israel regarding employers' hiring and willingness to keep workers aged 60–70 years old on staff. Their two research questions, “what explanations do employers give for their attitudes toward (not) employing older workers?” and “how are employers' attitudes related to the industrial section of the organization?”, guide the authors in uncovering some of these employers' discriminatory behaviours and attitudes towards older workers. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 participants, where 18 were employers (average age of 43.7 years old), 12 were a mix of older workers (average age of 71.3 years old) and professional experts (average age of 60.1 years old), across diverse industries in Israel (e.g. high technology, insurance, banking, hospitality, etc.). They applied a within-method triangulation to extract dominant themes found in participant narratives. The authors contribute a conceptual typology of employers' perceived ability to employ older workers versus their stated attitudes toward the employment of older workers, organized across different industries. For example, older workers are recognized as “masters” and professionals whom others consult in the manufacturing sector. Despite such a positive construction of the older worker in this industry, many contradictory attitudes and abilities were raised among the participants. For example, most of those interviewed shared how culture can create dismissive, harmful and disrespectful attitudes toward older workers. Other employers and specialists believed that the older worker brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to be shared across the organizations. Employers and HR specialists also shared their lack of familiarity with respect to legislation that governs the employment of older workers. In contrast, others stated they found no impediments to recruiting and hiring older workers. The authors suggest that organizations formulate and implement policy initiatives to address these biases and their lack of knowledge concerning the older workforce.
Theme 3: Entrepreneurs and self-employment
Anu Järvensivu and Monika E. von Bonsdorff take on the entrepreneurial and self-employed context of the ageing workforce in their paper titled “‘Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur’ - positioning analysis of written narratives”. Building from acquired knowledge on some of the positive attitudes and abilities concerning the employment of older workers, we continue to see in this study the need to move away from harmful stereotypical narratives that position the older worker in a negative light. Three Finnish women and four Finnish men entrepreneurs, ranging in age from 51 to 71 years old, contributed their written stories to this research. These stories were then treated in such a way that allowed Järvensivu and von Bonsdorff to co-construct a positive-circulation master narrative based on a combination of Bamberg's (2006) and De Fina's (2013) independent work on the three-level model for positioning of narratives. The resultant master narrative centred around entrepreneurs continuing “until the end” and as the “never ending caretakers” of themselves, their organizations and different stakeholder groups moves away not only from the predominantly negative stories of older workers but also contributes to more depth in the literature beyond psychological and financial reasons to continue to work. The authors contribute to undoing the observed “messiness” of the Finnish entrepreneurs' understandings of retirement with this positive-circulation story. Their analysis also reveals three kinds of career heritages, as part of these caretakers' narratives, that contribute to the literature on late-career entrepreneurship: business career heritage, spiritual-career heritage and intellectual career heritage.
Carin Holmquist and Elisabeth Sundin's contribution “Organizing work and activities to cope with age – the role of entrepreneurship for individuals aged 50+” also deals with the context of entrepreneurial activity in older age but this time within Sweden. They ask a fundamental question, “what is the interaction between age, aging and entrepreneurship?” and much like Järvensivu and von Bonsdorff (this issue) state, the defined Swedish retirement age (65–67) appears to be created as a structural barrier between working and not working (as a simplistic definition of what retirement is). In their mixed-method approach, Holmquist and Sundin's quantitative research into the Longitudinal Integrated Database for Health Insurance and Labour Market Studies (LISA) allows them to debunk one of the persistent entrepreneurship myths in Sweden as ‘only’ for the young and innovative. They elaborate that one's career appears to be made up of multiple steps, where entrepreneurship after the age of 50 is one of those potential career steps. Moving to their qualitative research to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between age and entrepreneurship, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 entrepreneurs and extracted themes from the participants' shared narratives. These themes reveal these entrepreneurs' approaches and need for work, which are not exclusively tied to economics, and how the organizing effects of work and working are needed as part of their processual experiences of age and ageing. While age was sometimes constructed as a ‘negative’ factor in these participants' entrepreneurship ventures, there were also positive factors that shaped their narratives (i.e. relating to their competencies and confidence in their activities). The authors also present two detailed case studies to deepen their arguments surrounding the relationships between age and ageing and entrepreneurship. The richness of their findings and accompanying discussion surrounding these relationships contribute to growing our knowledge of this crucial relationship, moving us beyond myths that seem to permeate perceptions of older entrepreneurs.
While the two previous submissions did not explicitly refer to gender and gender differences, Tarja Römer-Paakkanen and Pirjo Takanen-Körperich's contribution, “Women's entrepreneurship at an older age: women linguists' hybrid careers”, investigates how older women linguists' careers developed and led to self-employment or entrepreneurship. Similar to Holmquist and Sundin's (this issue) contribution, Römer-Paakkanen and Takanen-Körperich challenge the common notion of “career” as a one-time, linear “choice” and instead show how older women's entrepreneurship is a complex phenomenon within the cultural country contexts of Germany and Finland. Their focus is on understanding the factors influencing older women to become or continue into an entrepreneurship lifestyle beyond the often-cited economic reasons. Building on Allardt (1976) and Raivio and Karjalainen's (2013) theoretical framework of having, loving, being, acting and belonging, along with Brousseau et al.’s (1996) pluralistic careers and Takanen-Körperich's (2008) diverse career development model, this study uses semi-structured interviews and short narratives written by ten informants about their late-career motivations. Their study is explorative and interpretive and uses narrative analysis to build a life history of each informant. Their findings signal that these self-employed or entrepreneurial older women's careers developed along three of six career concepts (i.e. parallel, explorative or expertise directions). The factors that appear to influence these women's decision to continue their careers as entrepreneurs clearly include economic reasons (having). They also importantly point to other themes surrounding wellbeing, including social relations (loving), self-realization and lifelong learning (being), entrepreneurship as a lifestyle (acting) and meaningful extension of one's career (belonging).
Theme 4: viewpoint
The final paper in this special issue, by Stefanie Ruel, is a viewpoint essay which examines Hearn and Parkin's (2021) book “Age at work: Ambiguous boundaries of organizations, organizing and ageing”. This essay looks more closely at Hearn and Parkin's work, which deconstructs the boundary states of age(ing) in society and in organizations, and how master discourses around age(ing) can impact the production and sharing of academic knowledge. This essay underlines the essentialist approaches to age and ageing that are often seen in the MOS literature, and how Hearn and Parkin reflect on an important rigid practice that continues to be reproduced; that is, that (gendered/racist/classist/etc.) ageism in organizations and in broader society persists as one of those discriminatory practices that we seem not prepared to undo ‘just yet’. Ruel also reflects on the growing literature on death and post-death in and with organizations, and with Hearn and Parkin's guidance, realizes that death and post-death experiences can be socially and culturally productive. The dead person/the ‘dead’ career/ the ‘dead’ organization exercises power over the living, across a spectrum of productive to oppressive relations.
Concluding comments
From an outsider looking in, the nursing profession and the health services context appear to be a challenging workplace with daily reminders of not only age and ageing but also death and post-death intersecting with organizations. However, as our contributing authors share in their research, the human aspect of such a profession and the need to be able to laugh, love and be seem to be at the heart of nursing and long-term care practices. The importance of emotions and feelings are not rationalized away and are presented as an aesthetic force that brings older and younger workers together, celebrating diversity in care contexts. The expressed wish to have more clearly defined accommodations for late-career nursing professionals and to be able to create a notion of a sustainable career model that includes not just addressing the physical rigours of this profession but also the mental health issues that can be barriers to working later in life underscore the importance of creating and sustaining a positive workplace. While Niemi-Kaija (this issue) was surprised by the positive workplace she studied, there was no such ‘surprise’ for Salminen et al. (this issue). The senior nursing professionals appear to take on the cultural responsibility of sharing this positive workplace not only with the junior nursing professionals but also with academia and the public at large.
As guest editors for this special issue, one of our initial goals was to move away from the essentialist definition and use of ‘age’ to establish an individual's state of being in and among organizations. We found, however, that as we proceeded through the work of calling for submissions, reviewing submissions and working with the reviewers and the authors, we still needed age. For example, in writing the call for papers, we used the United Nations' ‘60 years old’ as a possible categorization for older age. Many of the country contexts (i.e. Finland, Israel and Sweden) that were studied by the authors who submitted to this special issue also needed age to be able to explain notions like ‘retirement age’ and the accompanying legal frameworks and benefits (i.e. pensions and financial stability in later life) that are involved in organizations. Holmquist and Sundin's (this issue) work, in particular, clearly stipulated different age constructions that can be found in the literature and, interestingly, that are all relational: biological age as related to legislation and rules constructions; functional age as related to performance; psychological age as related to subjective age; and organizational age as related to life span position. They also spoke to social constructions of age and that such constructions can be used as an organizational principle, setting boundaries of who is ‘within-group’ and who is ‘without-group’.
Unfortunately, these boundary-setting principles around constructions of age also have deep-seated negative constructions, where age and ageing are commonly framed as a “problem” for organizations to resolve. This is somewhat ironic to construct age as a problem to resolve as we all age despite some medicalized efforts to try and stop the ageing process. Similarly, and in light of this “age problem”, one area that does seem to be challenging in MOS, both from an employee and employer perspective, is the spectrum of possibilities surrounding retirement age. Finding a suitable definition for retirement is one hurdle to overcome, followed by a realization that retirement is context- and career-specific (e.g. Finland does not have a retirement age for entrepreneurs), and in some cases, retirement age is constructed as gender-specific (e.g. Israel). A paradox of sorts around age and ageing comes to the surface then when we introduce the intersection of organizations: the social construction of retirement and late career seem to essentialize age despite there being a spectrum of different ages that are assigned to stopping work. The need to decouple age from constructions of retirement and stable, linear career is most apparent when we consider ‘early retirement’ as in Mathew's case in Järvensivu and von Bonsdorff's (this issue) positive narrative circulation research. More explicitly (and perhaps absurdly in order to make our point), if one retires at the age of 30, is that individual then in ‘old age’? The flip side of this question is that cultural-dependent intense social and organizational pressures exist to continue to work in later life. This introduces interesting power relations in the relationship between age and ageing and organizations; notably, must we continue to work until an “older old age” (Hearn and Parkin, 2021, p. 18)? By embracing these concepts – age, ageing, retirement, etc. – as social constructions, can we not then construct work and late career to also be social constructions where choice is present, independent of age that helps to co-construct organizational structural barriers?
There are no ready answers to these questions, and clearly, more research on age and ageing at the intersection of organizations is needed. The manuscripts that are part of this special issue showcase that these various authors heard our call for knowledge creation based on discourses and the discursive nature of age and ageing in organizations. These authors applied a variety of theoretical frameworks and concepts and coupled those approaches with their qualitative analysis approaches, surfacing productive views into meaning and meaning-making around the older workforce. There continues to be a need to develop and apply a variety of broadly critical qualitative research methods to search for, find and analyse the experiences of late-career workers in various contexts. There also needs to be a broadening of research into diverse individuals' experiences of ageing in organizations, such as a consideration of menopause experiences decoupled from social constructions of ‘older age’ in the workplace as women can experience menopause at different reproductive points in their lifespan. These manuscripts contribute to our growing knowledge of meanings surrounding age and ageing in organizations and to the future of age and ageing studies. We are encouraged by the various themes, contexts and productive positionings of older workers that were raised in this special issue, and we are making a call to others to continue this work.
Note
Scare quotation marks are used as a way to signal to the reader the unstable and uncertain nature of a term or turn of phrase. Such a practice is founded in the notion of poststructural uncertainty (différence), which reflects a range of beliefs and meanings that we do not necessarily want to or can resolve (Belsey, 2002).
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