Age and Emotions in Organizations: Main, Moderating, and Context-Specific Effects

Abstract

This editorial introduces the Special Issue on “Age and Emotions in Organizations.” The Special Issue aims at leveraging theory and research on emotional aging to better understand the work-related consequences associated with employees’ age. After summarizing relevant theories of emotional aging, we develop 3 overarching conceptual models that allow for a categorization of research linking age, emotions, and work outcomes. We emphasize that these models are applicable to a wide range of age-related and emotion-related variables as well as work outcomes at multiple levels of analysis, and they allow for the inclusion of a broad array of personal and contextual boundary conditions. Building on these considerations, we summarize the 5 articles comprised within this Special Issue. Finally, we depict a number of future directions for research aimed at understanding age effects in organizations through an emotional lens.