Workforce age and innovation: a literature survey

Citation

Frosch, K.H. (2012), "Workforce age and innovation: a literature survey", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2012.04420caa.006

Workforce age and innovation: a literature survey

Article Type: Abstracts From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 20, Issue 3

Frosch K.H.International Journal of Management Reviews, December 2011, Vol. 13 No. 4, Start page: 414, No. of pages: 17

Provides a literature survey and critical discussion of existing studies exploring the effects of age on innovative performance, both at the individual and the firm level. Finds that, as individual-level evidence and some firm-level studies are of purely cross-sectional nature, the existing results have to be interpreted with caution owing to the presence of selectivity biases and unobserved heterogeneity. Studies at the aggregate level of firms address some of these issues. Finds that, in particular, the scarce longitudinal evidence reveals that it is very likely that older workers fare much better in innovation than previous cross-sectional evidence suggests. Describes how up to now, the literature survey does not find conclusive evidence that a youth-centred human resource strategy (always) fosters innovation. Apart from integrating the existing empirical evidence on different levels of aggregation, a strong focus of this paper is on methodological challenges in the empirical study of workforce age and innovation and it aims to offer a sound conceptual and methodological basis for further studies in this field of management research.ISSN: 1460-8545Reference: 41AC009

Keywords: Age, Creativity, Innovation, Older employees, Performance