Prelims

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AGE DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

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ADVANCED SERIES IN MANAGEMENT

Previous Volumes:

• Shared Services as a New Organizational Form

• ED. TANYA BONDAROUK

• Social Media in Human Resources Management

• EDS. TANYA BONDAROUK AND MIGUEL R. OLIVAS-LUJÁN

• Social Media in Strategic Management

• EDS. MIGUEL R. OLIVAS-LUJÁN AND TANYA BONDAROUK

• (Dis)honesty in Management: Manifestations and Consequences

• EDS.TIIA VISSAK AND MAAJA VADI

• Commercial Diplomacy and International Business: A Conceptual and Empirical Exploration

• EDS. H. RUËL

• Electronic HRM in Theory and Practice

• EDS. T. BONDAROUK, H. RUËL, AND J.C. LOOISE

• Relational Practices, Participative Organizing

• EDS. CHRIS STEYAERT AND BART VAN LOOY

• Autopoiesis in Organization Theory and Practice

• EDS. RODRIGO MAGALHAES AND RON SANCHEZ

• Organizations as Learning Systems “Living Composition” as an Enabling Infrastructure

• ED. MARJATTA MAULA

• Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives on Organizations: The Application of Complexity Theory to Organizations

• ED. EVE MITLETON-KELLY

• Managing Imaginary Organizations: A New Perspective on Business

• EDS. BO HEDBERG, PHILIPPE BAUMARD AND A. YAKHLEF

• Systems Perspectives on Resources, Capabilities and Management Processes

• EDS. JOHN MORECROFT, RON SANCHEZ AND AIMÉ HEENE

• Tracks and Frames: The Economy of Symbolic Forms in Organizations

• ED. K. SKOLDBERG

• Human Resource Management, Social Innovation and Technology

• EDS. TANYA BONDAROUK AND MIGUEL R. OLIVAS-LUJÁN

• Dead Firms: Causes and Effects of Cross-Border Corporate Insolvency

• MIGUEL M. TORRES, VIRGINIA CATHRO, AND MARIA ALEJANDRA GONZALEZ PEREZ

• New Ways of Working Practices: Antecedents and Outcomes

• JAN DE LEEDE

Title Page

AGE DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

EDITED BY

SILVIA PROFILI

European University of Rome, Rome, Italy

ALESSIA SAMMARRA

University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

LAURA INNOCENTI

LUISS Business School, Rome, Italy

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2017

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited

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ISBN: 978-1-78743-074-7 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-073-0 (Online)

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ISSN: 1877-6361 (Series)

List of Contributors

About the Authors

Jeanette N. Cleveland, Ph.D., is a Professor of Industrial & Organizational Psychology at Colorado State University. She earned her B.S. from Occidental College and M.S./Ph.D from the Pennsylvania State University. She has held faculty positions at Baruch College, The Pennsylvania State University and as an external examiner for University of Limerick, Ireland.

Her research interests include personal and contextual variables regarding work attitudes and performance decisions, workforce diversity issues including older workers and women, and work and family issues. She was consulting editor for Journal of Organizational Behavior and has or is currently serving on the editorial boards of Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Management, and International Journal of Management Reviews. She is the Co-Editor for the Applied Psychology Series for Taylor Francis. Her books include, Understanding performance appraisal: Social, organizational and goal perspectives (with K. Murphy) and Women and men in organizations: Sex and gender issues (with M. Stockdale and K. Murphy, 2000).

Simon Davis is a Senior Consultant in Ernst & Young’s advanced economic modelling capability in Australia. He specialises in economics and econometric modelling and has provided consulting services for both the private and public sectors. Simon has developed robust models that estimate global supply and demand for labor.

Catherine Earl, Ph.D., is a social anthropologist and policy analyst. Her research focuses on the rise of middle classes, undocumented migration, gender and social change, and the changing nature of work and welfare in contemporary Vietnam and Australia. She has taught in anthropology programs in Australia, Estonia and Vietnam. Currently she is working on the Saigon Bus, a project that explores post-socialist sociality, mobility, incivility and individualism through sensory experiences. Her recent book is Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Gender, Career, City (NIAS Press, 2014) and she is co-authoring a research monograph with Philip Taylor on the ageing workforce and women’s retirement in Australia.

Franco Fraccaroli (PhD) is professor of work and organizational psychology at Trento University (Italy). His research interests include aging and late career in organizations, work stress and psychosocial risks in the workplace. He served as President of European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology and he is now President of the Alliance for Organizational Psychology. He recently co-edit (with L. Finkelstein, D. Truxillo, and R. Kanfer) the book “Facing the challenges of a multi-age workforce: A use-inspired Approach”, 2015, New York: Psychology Press.

Gabriele Gabrielli is Adjunct Professor of HRM at LUISS University and Professor of Practice in People Management at LUISS Business School, where he also leads the People Management Competence Centre & Lab. He served as Human Resources Director for several large Italian and multinational companies. Certified Business Coach, he is author of several books and articles in the field HRM and organizational development.

Madison E. Hanscom is a PhD student in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Colorado State University. She is earning a concentration in occupational health psychology. Her primary research interests involve older workers and the aging process at work, safety climate and culture, and performance appraisal and assessments.

Lena-Alyeska Huebner is a PhD student in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Colorado State University and is currently researching age, age diversity at the workplace, as well as subjective aging with Dr. Jeanette Cleveland. She has contributed to the chapter “Subjective Age and Work” in the Encyclopedia of Geropsychology (in press), which describes multiple definitions, measures, antecedents, and outcomes of subjective age. Furthermore, her future studies, including her Master’s thesis, will be concentrated on subjective aging and performance appraisal at the workplace.

Patrick Huynh is Manager in Ernst & Young’s advanced economic modelling capability in Australia. He specializes in supporting strategic decision making through the application of econometric techniques, forecasting, and machine learning. Patrick has delivered economic models to both the public and private sectors within Australia and internationally. He has extensive experience in estimating the future workforce and skills needs through the development and use of labor force models.

Laura Innocenti is Adjunct Professor of Human Resource Management at LUISS Business School, Rome (Italy). She earned her PhD in Human Resource Management at King’s College, London. Her current research interests are in the areas of HRM, Age Management, Diversity Management, organizational climate, and employee engagement and commitment at work. She has published in the fields of HRM and OB in journals such as Human Resource Management Journal, Personnel Review, and The International Journal of Human Resources Management. She is also regular speaker in international academic conferences and is Co-chair of the Human Resource Management Track at the European Academy of Management.

Michael P. Leiter is a renowned expert on the psychology of work with an enduring commitment to improving worklife quality with many widely cited articles on job burnout, work engagement, and workplace civility. He has held a Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health and Wellbeing. In 2016 he moved to Deakin University in Melbourne Australia to continue this work as a Professor of Organizational Psychology. His recent initiatives have focused on improving the quality of worklife through enhancing the level of civility and respect among colleagues. His intervention work on improving respect and civility at work has demonstrated a close link of improved collegiality with greater engagement with work.

Fabrizio Maimone (PhD in Communication Sciences and Complex Organizations) is Lecturer of Organizational Theory and Design at LUMSA University and of Organizational Communication at LUISS Business School, Rome, Italy. Management Consultant and Trainer, he is Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Cross-cultural Competence and Management (EJCCM) and member of the board of the International Association of Cross-cultural Competence and Management (IACCM).

Justin Marcus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Ozyegin University in Istanbul, Turkey. His research interests include both substantive topics in diversity and prejudice, and cross-cultural organizational behavior, and quantitative research methodologies (meta-analysis, structural equation models, experimentation, and measurement and validation). Dr. Marcus’s research has appeared in numerous prestigious journals such as the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Gerontologist, and the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, and he is an Editorial Board member of the journal Human Resources Management. His recent initiatives have focused on studying the work experiences outcomes of older workers as they occur for individuals across demography, work context, and cultures.

Silvia Profili is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Director of the MS in Management of Innovation at the European University of Rome (Italy). She has been Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (USA), at the Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia, USA), at the University of Cordoba (Spain), and at the University of Twente (NL). Her current research interests include the impact of HRM practices on employee performance, employees’ engagement, and commitment at work, implications of ageing and age diversity in the workplace. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Personnel Review and The International Journal of Human Resources Management. She is Co-founder and Co-chair of the HRM Track at the European Academy of Management. She is member of the LUISS Business School People Management Competence Centre & Lab (Italy), where she has teaching and research responsibilities in the field of change and people management.

Chris Roberts is a Director at Ernst & Young in Australia and leads its advanced economic modelling capability. He is a Commonwealth Treasury-trained economist with over 17 years of experience in modelling and forecasting. He is an industry leader in the design and implementation of fully integrated modelling and forecasting frameworks that are relied upon by all levels of government and industry. Chris specializes in labor market modelling and analysis and has a depth of experience in estimating current and future workforce needs, skills and labor market dynamics.

Cort W. Rudolph is an assistant professor of Industrial & Organizational Psychology at Saint Louis University. He received a BA from DePaul University, and a MA and Ph.D. from Wayne State University. Cort’s research focuses on a variety of issues related to the aging workforce, including the application of lifespan developmental perspectives, wellbeing and work-longevity, and ageism. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, the Journal of Gerontology, and Human Resources Management Review. Cort serves on the editorial boards of Work, Aging and Retirement, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Alessia Sammarra is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour at the University of L’Aquila, Italy. She has been visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and at the University of Twente (NL). Her research interests lie in the areas of HRM practices-performance link, employees work attitudes and behaviors, and innovation networks. She is also author of several publications in the area of managing an ageing workforce. Her research has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Personnel Review. She is Co-founder and Chair of the Human Resource Management Track at the European Academy of Management. She has coordinated several research projects funded by public and private institutions and participated in international research networks funded by the EU. Alessia serves on the editorial board of the European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management.

Philip Taylor, Ph.D., is Professor of Human Resource Management at Federation Business School, Federation University Australia and a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has researched and written in the field of age and the labor market for over 25 years and has led major programs of research on ageing workforces. His specific research interests deal with individual orientations to work and retirement, employer attitudes and practices regarding older workers and public policy concerning the prolongation of workers’ lives. He is co-authoring a research monograph with Catherine Earl on the ageing workforce and women’s retirement in Australia.

Donald Truxillo (PhD) is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Portland State University. His research examines older worker stereotypes and job design for older and younger workers. He also examines job applicant perceptions of the employee selection process. He is a fellow of SIOP, APA, APS, and IAAP-Div. 1. He currently serves as Treasurer of the Alliance for Organizational Psychology.

Hannes Zacher is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He received his M.S. from the Technical University of Braunschweig and his Ph.D. from the University of Giessen. In his research program, Hannes investigates aging at work, career development, and occupational well-being; proactivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship; and pro-environmental employee behavior. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, and Psychology and Aging. He is an associate editor of Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and currently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Group & Organization Management, and Work, Aging and Retirement.

Sara Zaniboni (PhD) is a Senior Assistant Professor in Work and Organizational Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy). Her main research interests include aging in the workplace, retirement process, and work integration of people with mental disabilities. She has participated in international research projects and grants on these topics (partners: Canada, Portugal, USA, and France). She has published in numerous international academic journals, such as the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Organizational Psychology Review, Journal of Career Assessment, Anxiety Stress & Coping, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation. She is a member of the editorial board of Work, Aging and Retirement journal.

An Organizational Perspective on Ageing and Age Diversity at Work

Despite the recent financial crisis, the employment rate of older workers (aged between 55 and 64) is increasing at a rapid pace. In 2015, older workers comprised 53.3% of the workforce in the 28 EU member states; in 11 of the member states, the rates ranged between 50% and 66%, with a peak of 74,5% in Sweden (Eurostat, 2016). These trends are common to most industrialized countries where people are working until later in life, often far beyond the retirement ages established in past decades when life expectancies were shorter.

In light of this demographic shift, successful age management arises as one of the most relevant global challenges faced by leaders and policy makers. The increasing ageing and age diversity of the workforce are not transient phenomena, and their implications are compounded by several global trends such as increasing immigration, worker mobility, and gender and ethnic differences. Galvanized by a growing awareness of these issues, both researchers and practitioners have produced a growing body of scholarly and popular publications that address this phenomenon. Researchers, in particular, have studied ageing and age diversity in the workplace from a number of disciplines, theoretical perspectives and levels of analysis. Much theoretical and empirical work has shed light on age-related changes at work (Truxillo, Cadiz, & Rineer, 2015) – whether that involves physical abilities (e.g., Ng & Feldman, 2013), cognitive abilities (e.g., Cattell, 1971), personality (e.g., Soto, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2011), work motivation (e.g., Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), or employees’ work attitudes and performance (e.g., Ng & Feldman, 2010).

One fact that arises from this literature is that ageing is a multidimensional process: One single definition of age cannot capture its multiple meanings. Accordingly, a stream of research has focused on the different meanings of age and ageing, going beyond chronological age to highlight the role of age perceptions (i.e., subjective age, relative age, psychological age) in shaping individual attitudes and behaviors (De Lange et al., 2006). Such researchers suggest that we need to reconceptualize age if we want to change the way me manage age diversity.

Most of the literature on workforce ageing shows a theoretical emphasis on negative predictions (Shore et al., 2009), focusing on the effects of age stereotypes (Posthuma & Campion, 2009), age discrimination (Maurer & Rafuse, 2001), career timetables (Shore, Cleveland, & Goldberg, 2003), and prototype matching (Perry & Finkelstein, 1999). This field of research highlights individuals’ implicit or explicit exclusion from job opportunities, human resource investments, and decision-making processes because of their actual or perceived age. A recent meta-analysis shows that ageism significantly predicts personnel discriminatory selection and serves as a more subtle form of discrimination (in opposition to diversity-supportive policies) (Jones et al., 2017).

This growing body of research provides a strong theoretical and empirical basis for understanding the reality of an ageing workforce. However, there has been little direct research into how organizations could and should utilize the knowledge of differently aged workers (Truxillo et al., 2014) and thereby capitalize on the benefits of age diversity. The European Commission (2014) underlines the need to support the mature workforce by promoting active ageing policies that target better working conditions, better opportunities for job creation, and an overall better labor market that values an older and more skilled workforce. To this end, more research needs to investigate how organizations can customize people management practices (e.g., hiring, training, development and rewarding decisions), as well as redesign jobs and the work environment (e.g., flexible work times and spaces), to ensure that older workers utilize their strengths and perform successfully (Schalk et al., 2010).

Of course, the workforce is not only ageing, but also becoming more age-diverse, which means that older workers are not the sole concern. Very young employees must work together with considerably older colleagues and vice versa, which creates a management challenge that organizations must address (Rabl & Triana, 2014). Despite the growing relevance of this phenomenon, the research on age diversity’s workplace implications remains much less developed than that on race and gender diversity (Shore et al., 2009). This may be due to the ambiguity of age diversity’s significance in the literature. Like age, age diversity has different meanings. For instance, one can distinguish between age diversity at the individual level, which captures the dissimilarity of one member compared to others, and age diversity at the group/organizational level, which refers to “the distribution of differences among the members of a unit” with respect to age (Harrison & Klein, 2007, p. 1200). In addition, it seems that perceived diversity, which depends on group members’ diversity beliefs, is as important as objective diversity (Homan, Greer, Jehn, & Koning, 2010). Finally, it is worth noting that researchers often use the terms “diversity,” “heterogeneity,” “dissimilarity,” and “dispersion” rather interchangeably; however, these terms are rooted in different concepts and thus need to be treated with caution. Indeed, the meaning we associate with the age diversity concept impacts its consequences, antecedents, and operationalization. Case in point: Diversity can indicate separation when it refers to differences of opinions, values, or attitudes among members, any of which may cause disagreement or conflict. It can indicate variety when it reflects individuals’ unique sets of information, knowledge, and experience. It can indicate disparity when it represents differences in how valuable resources are concentrated among certain members (Harrison & Klein, 2007). And if we adopt a generational perspective, diversity takes another meaning: It denotes individuals’ differences in terms of the values and attitudes they develop in response to social and historical events (Twenge & Campbell, 2008).

Despite these conceptual and operational concerns, there is a growing body of research about age diversity and its effects on individual outcomes (e.g., Ellwart, Bündgens, & Rack, 2013; Liebermann, Wegge, Jungmann, & Schmidt, 2013; Sammarra, Innocenti, & Profili, 2015), group functioning (e.g., Schalk et al., 2010; Wegge, Roth, Neubach, Schmidt, & Kanfer, 2008), and organizational performance (e.g., Backes-Gellner & Veen, 2013; De Meulenaere, Boone, & Buyl, 2016). However, there is no clear consensus yet about whether age diversity has an overall positive or negative effect on these various dimensions and levels of analysis. According to the Information and Decision-Making Perspective (Williams & O’Reilly, 1998), positive effects should prevail because age-diverse teams benefit from a wider range of non-redundant knowledge, experiences, relationships, and perspectives. This not only gives age-diverse groups a larger pool of resources, but also encourages team members to process various sources of task-relevant information, leading to more innovative solutions (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992). The Social Categorization Perspective, on the contrary, posits that individuals’ age differences can be used to categorize oneself and others into groups, which then activates in-group and out-group distinctions. As a result, people become more positively inclined toward a group and its members when they are more similar to the group members in terms of age (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). In this sense, group homogeneity should result in higher group performance. A third model, the Categorization-Elaboration Model of work-group diversity (Van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004), seeks a middle ground. Specifically, it argues that age diversity could have both positive and negative effects; the extent to which the negative effects of social categorization overcome the positive impact of information elaboration depends on several moderating and mediating variables (e.g., task motivation, task ability, social category salience).

Given this foundation, there is a need for more research into the processes underlying the effects of work-group diversity, which could ultimately produce better practical strategies for dealing with age diversity. To that end, this volume bridges the theoretical and empirical approaches: It discusses the challenges of valuing workers at various points in their professional lives, from youth to retirement, as well as the benefits that arise from leveraging an age-diverse workforce. Embracing perspectives that span from the individual to the organizational levels of analysis, the book explores the two distinct, but intertwined, phenomena of workforce ageing and increasing workforce age diversity. That said, the book primarily assumes an organizational perspective for two reasons:

First, we believe that age is a diversity element that requires more sensitivity on the part of employers and leaders. Among CEOs who are adopting strategies to promote diversity and inclusion, only 8% say they are focusing on age, compared to 33% for gender and 24.5% for race/ethnicity/nationality (PwC, 2015).

Second, just like the societies they inhabit and the individuals they employ, organizations are grappling with the complexity invoked by unprecedented demographic changes. Such changes raise questions about conventional ways of management thinking, doing and being. Overlooking age as a diversity factor means forfeiting many of the benefits of full inclusiveness and exposing the organization to several risks. However, while scholars generally agree on the need to engage a more age-diverse workforce, the literature lacks the same consistency regarding the constructs’ conceptualization, strategic impact, and related organizational practices. For this reason, research should focus on contingency factors that make age diversity work (Guillaume, Dawson, Otaye-Ebede, Woods, & West, 2017), especially those that managers can control, such as strategy, leadership, unit and task design, climate and culture, and HRM practices.

In order to assist readers in parsing this issue, this book is divided into two parts. The first section raises questions about the meanings of age and age diversity, as well as how and when age matters in organizations.

Any considerations related to age diversity management in the workplace must rely on data about population ageing, the ageing workforce, and labor force participation trends. Addressing this need, the first chapter, written by Catherine Earl, Philip Taylor, Chris Roberts, Patrick Huynh, and Simon Davis, presents labor supply and demand scenarios for 10 OECD countries. The authors offer an extensive analysis of older workers’ labor force participation trends against the backdrop of workplace changes resulting from globalization, casualization, and, increasingly, automation. They also discuss a number of implications for policy makers across the world.

The second chapter, written by Hannes Zacher and Cort W. Rudolph, proposes a comprehensive analysis of successful ageing at work. Drawing from theories in the gerontology, lifespan development, and organizational literatures, the authors discuss what success means in the context of an ageing workforce, what time frame is necessary to observe ageing in the work context, and why some workers are ageing more successfully than others.

The third chapter, written by Justin Marcus and Michael P. Leiter, analyzes generational differences at work by accounting for contextual factors. To this end, the authors test a set of countervailing hypotheses by comparing the effect of age cohorts with that of generational cohorts. Their results favor a generational hypothesis regarding the positively valenced construct of job satisfaction, but an age-based hypothesis for the negatively valenced construct of turnover intentions. This suggests that the generational and age approaches may have different effects on work outcomes based on the situation at hand.

The fourth chapter, written by Silvia Profili, Laura Innocenti, and Alessia Sammarra, discusses the conceptual issues involved with theoretically defining and empirically measuring the age diversity climate construct. After reviewing and comparing age diversity climate with other age-focused climate concepts, the authors discuss several open issues related to the operationalization of age diversity climate, including the level of analysis, the choice of referent, and the dimensions of analysis. They conclude by outlining implications for future research on one of the most relevant boundary conditions of age diversity effects.

The second part of the volume examines the role and contribution of HR practices in forging an age-inclusive workplace. To this end, the fifth chapter, written by Jeanette N. Cleveland, Lena-Alyeska Huebner, and Madison E. Hanscom, introduces an intersectionality perspective to the study of diversity effects. Their starting point is that ageing workers are a diverse group and have multiple identities. Therefore, the authors examine the joint effects of age and gender upon various life domains and decisions, suggesting that the experience of ageing differs for women and men in terms of health, resilience, and life domains. Further, they argue that HR practices are more likely to succeed if they recognize and accommodate the needs of a diverse workforce – acknowledging, for example, that older men and older woman differ in their needs, preferences, and experiences, or even that the concept of “age” may play out differently for men and women.

The sixth chapter, written by Franco Fraccaroli, Sara Zaniboni, and Donald Truxillo, explores the relationship between job design and older workers. The authors assess the theoretical approaches to job design that have emerged in recent last decades, as well as highlight job characteristics that may be more suitable or beneficial for people in older age groups or later stages of their careers.

The seventh chapter, written by Alessia Sammarra, Silvia Profili, Fabrizio Maimone, and Gabriele Gabrielli, inspects the HRM system’s role in facilitating effective knowledge sharing in age-diverse organizations. To this end, the authors synthesize research on HR planning, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward systems. By strengthening their HRM practices, the authors argue, organizations can better capitalize on the unique knowledge-based resources held by their younger and older employees.

We hope that, taken together, these studies will contribute to the literature on ageing and age diversity by exploring their implications on individual, group, and organizational outcomes. This work should appeal to not only scholars and researchers, but also leaders, managers, and practitioners who are interested in the management of people and want to draw upon workforce age diversity in order to obtain competitive advantages.

To conclude, we would like to thank Tanya Bondarouk and Miguel R. Olivas-Luján, Editors of the Emerald Advanced Series in Management, for believing in our project and ensuring continuous support during the book’s preparation. The very idea of editing a book on ageing and age diversity in the workplace was born during a lunch we had with Tanya at the EURAM Conference in Warsaw on June 2015, where we jointly chaired the Human Resource Management Standing Track. Thank you, Tanya, for giving us this opportunity. Further, we want to thank all the book contributors, whose expertise and commitment made this work possible and enjoyable. It is a privilege to have you all in our edited book. We are also grateful to all the colleagues who provided useful reviews and comments to improve the quality of the book. Finally, our thanks to Emma Stevenson and the team of Emerald Group Publishing for helping us keep the book on track.

Silvia Profili

Alessia Sammarra

Laura Innocenti

Editors