Age Matters: The Impact of Ageism on Health, Cognitive Impairment, Work Lives, and Anti-Ageist Interventions

Age is a social constructions. The treatment of people on the basis of their age, imposes serious psycho-emotional, social and economic costs on society and older people. The experiences of ageism may be exacerbated when other forms of acute and chronic forms of oppression are experienced due to racism, sexism, etc. The first paper looks at the impact of ageism on older people’s health. Their systematic review of studies showed that ageism detrimentally and consistently impacted older individuals in 11 health domains, with the prevalence of significant findings increasing over time. Informed by NIA’s Health Disparities Framework, the second paper examines the relationships between discrimination and protective factors on cognitive functioning. Their analyses of the Health and Retirement Survey data reveal, among other things, that everyday experiences of ageism significantly worsen older adults cognitive functioning. Using survey data of adults throughout the life-span, our third presenter examines how multiple identities (such as age and gender) influence employees’ perspectives on workplace fairness in hypothetical situations. The findings are informative to human resource departments in ensuring workplace fairness within the context of a multigenerational workforce. The final paper examines two efforts to disrupt ageism, specifically interventions that target students in an intergenerational program and staff members of senior living communities. Results from these evaluations point to an increase in positive attitudes among students and a reduction in ageist behaviors among staff members. All presenters will discuss policy, practice and research implications of their studies.

Perceptions of Workplace Fairness in the Context of Age and Intersectionality

While scholars have focused on workplace fairness (often called organizational justice) for quite some time, the context of diversity—in its many forms—has rarely been included in this conversation. This presentation will review concepts related to workplace fairness, describing how the context of diversity may influence perceptions of it. We then will present the results of a recent survey of 609 respondents aged 18 to 70 with a focus on how holding diverse attributes (e.g., age, gender, and their intersectionality) may shape perceptions of workplace fairness and diversity. Overall, we found that the perceptions of workplace fairness and diversity are similar by age and gender, with a few notable differences (e.g., older respondents value interpersonal justice the most, such as their opinions being considered, and younger respondents see workplace diversity the most positively). These results can inform scholarship and discussions on human resource practices and environmental change in organizations.

Stereotypes at Work

Stereotypes are a central concern in society and in the workplace. Stereotypes are cognitions that drive what individuals know, believe, and expect from others as a result of their social identities. Stereotypes predict how individuals view and treat one another at work, often resulting in inaccurate generalizations about individuals based on their group membership. As such, it’s important to break down and combat the use of stereotypes in decision-making at work. If stereotypes can be overcome in the workplace, fairness and equity in organizations becomes more likely.

Workplace fairness, information sharing and employee performance in a budget setting: an empirical study

The importance that workplace fairness and information sharing has on employees’ performance has gained a significant attention from researchers and practitioners. However, no empirical evidence on the combined role of both workplace fairness and information sharing on employee performance has been found so far. Thus the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of workplace fairness and information sharing on employees’ performance in a budget setting. A set of direct and indirect hypotheses are tested using survey data collected from 108 sub-unit managers from various industries, randomly selected from Bursa Malaysia (the stock exchange of Malaysia). The findings indicate that both workplace fairness and information sharing are positively associated with improved employee performance in a participative budget setting. Furthermore, information sharing mediates the relationship between workplace fairness and employee performance. This suggests that when employees perceive the budgeting process as being fair, they would be more willing to share information, which will then lead to improved employee performance.

LGBT Workplace Inequality in the Federal Workforce: Intersectional Processes, Organizational Contexts, and Turnover Considerations

How do lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees fare in US workplaces? Beyond formal discrimination, do LGBT workers encounter biases that degrade the quality of their day-to-day workplace experiences? Using a representative sample of more than 300,000 employees in 28 “best case” organizations—federal agencies with LGBT-inclusive policies—the authors examine not only whether these informal workplace inequalities occur but also where and for whom they are most exaggerated. LGBT employees report worse workplace experiences than their colleagues across 16 measures of employee treatment, workplace fairness, and job satisfaction. These inequalities are amplified or tempered by organizational contexts and can even affect turnover intentions. They are also intersectional: LGBT women and people of color have consistently more negative experiences than do men and white LGBT workers. These results help map the landscape of LGBT workplace inequality and underscore the importance of considering intersectional and organizational contexts therein.

Soldier or actor?

Purpose Though widely studied, organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is yet to emerge as a thoroughly understood concept. For instance, citizenship behaviours emanating from self-serving motives remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of psychological ownership in differentiating individuals with genuine motives (“soldiers”) from those with self-serving motives (“actors”). Design/methodology/approach The study defines and operationalises genuineness of OCBs by comparing self-rated and others-rated citizenship behaviours. It is hypothesised that psychological ownership is positively associated with citizenship behaviour, and this relationship is positively moderated by degree of genuineness. All the hypothesised relationships are tested on the basis of empirical evidence produced by a two-wave study on a cross-hierarchical matched sample (n = 338) in a large Indian IT MNC. Findings A strong positive relationship between psychological ownership and citizenship behaviour was observed. A positive moderation by genuineness was also found suggesting that relationship between psychological ownership and citizenship behaviour became stronger with higher genuineness. In a nutshell, the results indicated that soldiers and actors could be differentiated on the basis of their relative scores on psychological ownership. Originality/value Apart from theoretical contributions, the present study offers a headway to managers in identifying employees who engage in citizenship behaviour out of genuine motives toward their organisation. As citizenship behaviours increasingly find prominence in employees’ self-appraisal, this differentiation assumes importance in promoting workplace fairness.

Great expectations

Purpose Organizational fairness has been shown to affect numerous employee outcomes, including organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether an expatriate manager’s favorability toward accepting a foreign assignment affects the way they respond to subsequent treatment in the workplace, viewed in terms of organizational justice. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered in two stages from 175 expatriate managers located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To test the authors’ predictions, the authors analyzed organizational commitment and job satisfaction as a function of organizational fairness (distributive and interpersonal) and pre-departure opinion. Findings The results suggest that expatriate managers who express a higher degree of favorability toward accepting a foreign assignment appear less reactive to changes in organizational fairness. Meanwhile, expatriate managers who express a lesser degree of favorability toward accepting the foreign assignment appear more sensitive to workplace fairness, such that when they feel treated unfairly, they demonstrate worse outcomes than those who were in favor of the assignment, and when they feel treated fairly, they demonstrate better outcomes than those who were in favor of the assignment. The net effect of pre-departure opinion appears to be an amplification of the relationship between subsequent fairness and outcomes. Practical implications Expatriate managers with a less favorable view of their assignment may harbor deep questions about whether they want to be in this new job capacity, and may therefore be more sensitive to how they are treated. Alternatively, people with a more favorable view of their assignment may have already decided they want to be in the new capacity, and so may be more robust to workplace treatment. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this paper constitutes the first investigation of the effects of expatriate pre-departure opinion (i.e. favorability toward accepting a foreign assignment) on job satisfaction and commitment within the context of organizational justice. Furthermore, the UAE is a highly relevant context to study expatriate behavior.

Dispute Resolution in the Boundaryless Workplace

16 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 467 (2001)Since the Supreme Court's decision Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp. which compelled an employee to submit his age discrimination claim to arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), there has been a dramatic increase in the number of nonunion firms adopting arbitration systems. At the same time, there has been a flood of lawsuits challenging these employment systems, and a corresponding avalanche of judicial opinions addressing the legal issues left open in Gilmer – issues such as the problematic nature of consent in employment arbitration, the deficiencies in due process, and the applicability of the FAA to employment contracts. These developments comprise the past and the present of employment arbitration, and were explored at length at the Symposium. This article addresses the future of dispute resolution in the workplace. The workplace is changing in ways that make arbitration, as well as other types of dispute resolution, more important than ever. In the changing workplace, it might be possible to design an arbitration system that would help to promote workplace fairness.

Women’s Movement and Women Workers, Post-1945

Working women and their issues played a central role in the women’s movement in the decades following World War II. Feminists lobbied, litigated, and engaged in direct action for workplace fairness. Working women, especially those in unions, joined feminist organizations and established their own organizations as well. There were fault lines within the women’s movement over the issues, strategies, and level of commitment to the causes of working women. In the first two decades after 1945, the unionists and liberal reformers who constituted the so-called Women’s Bureau Coalition (named after the U.S. Women’s Bureau) opposed the mostly affluent and conservative members of the National Woman’s Party for their support of the Equal Rights Amendment, supporting instead protective laws and policies that treated women differently from men in the workplace. With the arrival of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, “labor feminists” clashed with the middle-class professional women at the helm of newly formed feminist organizations. As support for gender equality transformed employment practices, some labor feminists sought to retain (or extend to men) selected protective measures introduced in the early 20th century to shield women workers from the worst aspects of wage labor. In the face of harsh economic conditions in the 1970s, labor feminists again opposed other feminists for their efforts to modify the union practice of “last hired, first fired” as a way of retaining affirmative-action hiring gains. In recent decades feminists have focused on equity measures such as comparable worth and pregnancy leave as means of addressing the unique challenges women face. In addition they have expanded their concern to lesbian and transgender workers, and, increasingly, to the needs of immigrant workers who make up an increasingly percentage of the working population.

In the eyes of the beholder : exploring work perceptions of state government employees

What is it like to be a government employee when government is being constantly critiqued by almost everyone: citizens, industry, and media? This dissertation aims to answer the question by bringing attention to government as a human organization and examining employees' perceptions of government as their workplace. More specifically, the study focuses on how government employees' perceptions of workplace fairness and external prestige change depending on the length of their public service, and how these perceptions influence their organizational identification and turnover intentions. Overall, the dissertation argues that public distrust and cynicism toward the government negatively affect government employees -- citizens whose job is to represent the government. Based on the regression analysis of the survey of 522 state government employees, the study found that as years go by, more employees perceive their workplace as unfair in terms of compensation, procedures and interactions at work. Moreover, the majority of state employees do not believe that their work is valued by citizens whom they serve. These perceptions negatively influence state government employees' organizational identification and lead to turnover intentions. Thus, the dissertation's findings highlight the role of government employees' workplace perceptions in ensuring high-performing public organizations and have significant practical implications for public personnel management and government-citizens relations in general.