Georg Henning,Boo Johansson,Magnus Lindwall,Oliver Huxhold
{"title":"Retirement Adjustment in Germany From 1996 to 2014","authors":"Georg Henning,Boo Johansson,Magnus Lindwall,Oliver Huxhold","doi":"10.1093/workar/waab027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/workar/waab027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The context of retirement has changed over the last decades, but there is little knowledge on whether the quality of retirement adjustment has changed as well. Changes in retirement regulations and historical differences in resources may affect the quality of adjustment and increase inequalities between different socioeconomic groups. In the present study, we investigated historical differences in retirement adjustment by comparing cross-sectional samples of retirees from 1996, 2002, 2008, and 2014, based on the population-based German Ageing Survey. Adjustment was measured with three different indicators (perceived change in life after retirement, retirement satisfaction, adjustment difficulties). Retirement satisfaction was higher in later samples, but for the other two outcomes, there was no evidence for systematic increases or decreases in levels of retirement adjustment with historical time over the studied period. White-collar workers reported better adjustment than blue-collar workers did, and for two of three outcomes, this effect was stable over time. The white-collar workers’ advantage concerning retirement satisfaction, however, increased. We conclude that in Germany, at least for those who retire within the usual time window, adjustment quality has not changed systematically over the examined 18-year period. We only found mixed evidence for a growing social inequality in the retirement adjustment. However, as individual agency in choosing one’s retirement timing and pathway is increasingly restricted, social inequalities in well-being before retirement may increase.","PeriodicalId":46486,"journal":{"name":"Work Aging and Retirement","volume":"43 20","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2021-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Organizational Response to Workforce Aging: Tensions in Human Capital Perspectives","authors":"Peter Berg, Matthew M. Piszczek","doi":"10.1093/workar/waab026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/workar/waab026","url":null,"abstract":"The proportion of older workers in the labor force is increasing. While much research over recent decades has suggested that this will create significant challenges for organizations, current evidence suggests that age-related human resource management practices are rare. Using a grounded theory approach, we examine why organizations are not adopting formal practices and what they are doing instead of using data from 43 interviews and focus groups within eight German and U.S. manufacturing facilities in 3 organizations. We find significant tension between perceptions of aging’s impact by top managers and unit supervisors. Lacking top-level formal support for age-related initiatives, our evidence shows supervisors adopting more informal, unit-level responses that do not require significant reorganization of work, masking the impact of workforce aging to top leaders. We also develop a typology of practices used to respond to workforce aging based on their effects on human capital flows in and out of the organization. Finally, we find that while aging is assessed similarly in the U.S. and Germany, German firms have greater flexibility and more formal practice options in their response due to employee relations systems, working time arrangements, and human resource planning systems which pressure organizations more to adopt formal practices. Our results inform a human capital perspective of the organizational response to workforce aging.","PeriodicalId":46486,"journal":{"name":"Work Aging and Retirement","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74718030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}