Decreasing employability with age? The role of automation risk, lifelong learning and occupational mobility
Abstract
Purpose
As aging populations lead to longer working lives and increasing automation threatens job security, maintaining lifelong employability is becoming a fundamental challenge for many individuals. The purpose of this study is to examine how lifelong employability can be maintained.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the theoretical perspectives of both movement capital and selection, optimization and compensation (SOC) theories, we used large-scale survey data (N = 2,256) from three European countries to investigate strategies for preserving employability among aging workers. Specifically, we explored the perceived risk of automation, lifelong learner characteristics and self-efficacy for occupational mobility as boundary conditions that may shape the negative relationship between age and employability.
Findings
We found a negative relationship between age and employability, which was more pronounced when the perceived risk of automation was higher. Furthermore, lifelong learner characteristics and self-efficacy for occupational mobility mitigated the negative relationship, so that age was not related to employability if people possessed lifelong learner characteristics and were ready for a career change.
Originality/value
Our study implies the importance of investing in enhancing lifelong learner characteristics and self-efficacy for occupational mobility for older employees.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This publication was partially supported by the European Social Fund under the No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712 “Development of Competences of Scientists, other Researchers and Students through Practical Research Activities” measure. We would like to thank our collaborators at the host organization as well as Anna Igonkina for their invaluable assistance in collecting the data.
Citation
Goštautaitė, B. and Šerelytė, M. (2024), "Decreasing employability with age? The role of automation risk, lifelong learning and occupational mobility", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-11-2022-0419
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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