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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dorien T. A. M. Kooij, Department of Human Resource Studies, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037AB, Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
Decision Editor: Mo Wang, PhD • 309
Advance Access publication July 10, 2015 Review Article
Successful Aging at Work: The Active Role of
Employees
Dorien T. A. M. Kooij
Department of Human Resource Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
ABSTR ACT
Since workforces are aging, governments, organizations, and researchers are increasingly interested in the topic of successful aging at work. In this article, I viewed successful aging at work from a sustainability perspective, and argued that a continuous person–job fit between the changing person and changing work is required for employees to be able to maintain their health, motivation, and work ability, and thus age successfully at work. Since one important way to achieve current and future fit is by engaging in proactive behaviors, I aimed to extend and specify the proactive behaviors proposed in lifespan psychology literature (e.g., selection) with proactive behaviors proposed in organi-zational psychology literature (e.g., job change negotiation) to identify proactive behaviors for successful aging at work. For example, job crafting can help aging workers to adjust their job to changing goals and motives, improving current person–job fit, and proactive career planning can help aging workers to set new career goals, improving future person–job fit.
Workforces are aging across the globe, raising pressing issues for organ-izations, governments, and aging employees, such as how to extend working lives and how to motivate aging workers (Phillips & Sui, 2012). Recognizing the urgency of these issues, research on aging at work has expanded over the last decade (e.g., Bal, Kooij, & Rousseau, 2015). Since many of the theories and concepts we use in the field of organizational psychology are largely based on younger and middle-aged workers, researchers need to rethink and examine the appropri-ateness of these theories and concepts in light of the aging workforce (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). In addition, new concepts have emerged. One prominent concept that has captured a lot of attention in research and practice is successful aging at work, which has been the focus of an inaugural-issue article in this journal (Zacher, 2015).
As discussed thoroughly by Zacher (2015), successful aging at work has been conceptualized and operationalized differently through-out the years. Based on gerontology and lifespan psychology research,
Zacher (2015) defined successful aging at work as positively deviat-ing (compared to other employees) intraindividual age-related trajec-tories of a work outcome over time and across the working life span. According to this definition, employees are only aging successfully when they are more successful than others, and employees who are doing less bad (e.g., their decrease in work ability is lower) compared to their counterparts are aging successfully as well. In this article, I view successful aging from a sustainability perspective, as the maintenance of workers’ health, motivation, and working capacity or work ability now and in the future (De Lange, Kooij, & Van der Heijden, 2015).
According to De Lange and colleagues (2015, p. 57), worker attitudes and behaviors can be considered sustainable “if their (future) needs, abilities, and interests are congruent with aspects and (future) require-ments of their current and future work environment.” Improving current and future fit means that employees fulfill present needs and optimally use current skills and knowledge without compromising the fulfillment and use of future needs, skills, and knowledge. Hence, for employees to be able to maintain their health, motivation, and work ability, and thus age successfully at work, a continuous person—envi-ronment fit (PE fit), and more specifically person–job fit (Edwards, Cable, Williamson, Lambert, & Shipp, 2006) between the changing worker and the changing work is required.
One important way to achieve current and future fit is by engaging in proactive PE fit and proactive career behaviors (Kira, Van Eijnatten, & Balkin, 2010). Parker and Collins (2010) define these behaviors as self-initiated behaviors aimed at changing oneself or the situation to achieve greater compatibility between one’s own attributes and the organizational environment (i.e., establishing current PE fit, e.g., by job change negotiation) and to secure a job or find new jobs (i.e., establishing future PE fit, e.g., by career initiative). However, Kooij, Tims, and Kanfer (2015) noticed that many of the organizational stud-ies on aging at work have viewed older workers as passive recipients or products of their work environment. Since recent lifespan psychol-ogy literature suggests that older workers take an active role in shaping their environment (Kahana & Kahana, 1996; Ouwehand, de Ridder, & Bensing, 2007), Kooij and colleagues (2015) also emphasized the
importance of proactive PE fit behaviors (i.e., job crafting), through which aging workers can continuously adjust their work to intraper-sonal changes that are part of the aging process, and thus age success-fully at work (Moghimi, Scheibe, & Van Yperen, in press).
Similarly, I will argue that improving current and future person– job fit between aging workers and their work is crucial for sustainable and thus successful aging at work, and that employee proactive behav-iors (i.e., proactive PE fit and proactive career behavbehav-iors) are crucial for improving current and future fit. Hence, I aim to extend the proactive behaviors proposed in lifespan psychology literature with proactive behaviors proposed in organizational psychology literature to identify proactive behaviors for successful aging at work. In this article, I will first discuss why person–job fit is crucial for successful aging at work by discussing successful aging at work from a sustainability perspective. Next, based on lifespan psychology literature, I will explain why aging workers are likely to engage in proactive behaviors and discuss the types of proactive behaviors aging workers engage in. Further, based on organizational psychology literature, I will discuss proactive PE fit and proactive career behaviors. Finally, combining these literatures, I will identify proactive behaviors for successful aging at work.
SUCCESSFUL AGING AT WOR K :
A SUSTAINABLE FIT PER SPECTIVE
Freund (2008, pp. 94–95) defined successful aging as “a level of func-tioning that allows one to strive to fulfill personal goals and maintain personal standards and is, to a substantial degree, a result of one’s hav-ing successfully managed internal and external resources throughout one’s life span.” Similarly, an important aspect of sustainability is the
resource-based dimension (De Lange et al., 2015; Docherty, Kira, & Shani, 2009), which defines sustainability as a process of preserva-tion and regenerapreserva-tion of resources. Thus, both successful aging and sustainability at work emphasize the optimization and preservation of current and future resources, such as energy, time, and social relations. Although sustainability usually refers to managing resources between individuals over time (i.e., making sure that current generations do not consume all resources at the cost of future generations), from a psycho-logical perspective sustainability refers to managing resources within individuals over time (i.e., using current personal resources without compromising future use and development of resources). Because resources are crucial for achieving one’s goals (Freund & Riediger, 2001), the amount of resources accumulated at younger ages and their management over the lifespan and at older ages is crucial for successful aging (Freund, 2008).
One important way to effectively manage resources is by increasing fit between personal needs and potentials and the environment (Kira et al., 2010). Work ability theory, for example, proposes that work abil-ity, defined as the extent to which an employee is capable of working in the present and in the near future (i.e., an important resource at work), depends on employees’ personal physical and mental abilities as well as the requested level of work demands (Ilmarinen, 2001; Ilmarinen & Tuomi, 1992). Since personal abilities change with aging and work demands change (e.g., because of technological developments), work ability is about continuously finding “a balance between a person’s abilities and work demands” (Ilmarinen, 2009, p. 61). Hence, work ability theory actually conceptualizes work ability as the fit between a person and his or her work, or person–job fit. Similarly, De Lange
and colleagues (2015) assume that worker attitudes and behaviors are sustainable (i.e., capable of preserving or regenerating resources) if their current and future needs, abilities and interests are congruent with or fit aspects and requirements of their current and future work (environment).
Hence, current and future person–environment fit, and more spe-cifically person–job fit (Schaufeli, 2011) will lead to sustainable and successful aging at work. Person–job fit is defined as the relationship between a person’s characteristics and those of the job or the tasks that are performed at work (Kristof, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005, p. 284). Edwards (1991) distinguished needs–supplies and demands– abilities person–job fit. Needs–supplies fit refers to whether employ-ees’ needs, desires, or preferences are met by the jobs that they perform and demands–abilities fit refers to a match between employees’ knowl-edge, skills, and abilities and the requirements of the job (Kristof et al., 2005). Needs–supplies and demands–abilities person–job fit result in increased health, wellbeing, and performance (Edwards, 1991; Kristof et al., 2005) and so successful aging at work from a sustainability perspective.
Continuously improving person–job fit is particularly impor-tant for successful aging, because motives and abilities change with age (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004; Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), while job mobility often decreases (Hansson, DeKoekkoek, Neece, & Patterson, 1997) and hence job tenure increases with age. Older workers are more likely to stay in their cur-rent job, which results in potential person–job misfit over time (Kanfer, Beier, & Ackerman, 2013; Zacher, Feldman, & Schulz, 2014). For example, work-related growth motives and physical abilities decrease and intrinsic work motives and crystallized intelligence increase with age. Hence, using construction workers as an example, as they age they are more likely to experience difficulty performing the more strenu-ous physical tasks associated with the job, resulting in potential misfit, whereas aging counselors or academics benefit from increased crys-tallized intelligence, and thus increased person–job fit (Kooij et al., 2015; Zacher et al., 2014). Adjusting or realigning the job to what indi-viduals would like and still can do, is important for successful aging at work (Kanfer et al., 2013; Robson, Hansson, Abalos, & Booth, 2006). Another reason why person–job fit is so important for successful aging at work is because of the individualized approach of the fit literature (Edwards, 1991). Although changes in work motives and abilities are similar among older workers, individual differences in preferences, dis-likes, attitudes, and inclinations increase with age (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005; Van Lieshout, 2000), making it harder for organizations to develop standard job designs for this heterogeneous group of older workers (Bal, De Jong, Jansen, & Bakker, 2012).
In sum, successful aging is closely related to sustainability at work; individual employees age successfully when they are able to preserve and regenerate resources to achieve their personal goals and maintain health, motivation, and work ability, now and in the future. To effec-tively manage their resources, aging workers should strive for current and future person–job fit (e.g., optimally utilizing current strengths and abilities, without overtaxing and thus exhausting abilities, and also developing skills and abilities needed for future work requirements). Hence, an important question is how to increase current and future per-son–job fit, and thus achieve sustainable and successful aging at work. Following Holling (2001), who defined human sustainability as “the capacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capability” (p. 390), De
Lange and colleagues (2015) suggested that the individual employee has an important responsibility in creating, testing and maintaining his or her own work ability. Similarly, Kira and colleagues (2010) refer to sustainable work abilities as long-term adaptive and proactive abilities to work, farewell at work, and contribute through working. Increased responsibility and proactivity of individual employees are reflected in the concept of proactive behaviors, which refers to self-initiated, anticipatory actions aimed at changing and improving the situation or oneself (Parker, Williams, & Turner, 2006). Both the lifespan psychol-ogy and organizational psycholpsychol-ogy literatures demonstrate that aging employees engage in proactive behaviors.
PROACTIVE BEHAVIOR S OF AGING WOR KER S
IN LIFESPAN PSYCHOLO GY LITER ATUR E
There is much support in lifespan psychology literature that older peo-ple take an active role in shaping their environment (Kooij et al., 2015; Zacher & Kooij, in press). This literature shows that people exercise agency in dealing with the biological, psychological, and social changes that are part of the aging process (Featherman, 1992; Freund & Baltes, 2002; Ryff, 1989). For example, the environmental proactivity hypoth-esis suggests that older adults are not simply pawns of their environ-ment but can proactively change their environenviron-ment to meet their own needs and to maintain independence (Lawton, 1989). Confirming
this hypothesis, several researchers have shown that older workers use action-regulation strategies aimed at changing their environment to adapt to age-related changes (e.g., Freund, 2008; Wahl, Iwarsson, & Oswald, 2011). Similarly, Ouwehand and colleagues (2007) argued that older people do not simply cope with decline, but also continue to actively develop themselves and strive for personal goals by creating environments that make success possible.
Three of the most prominent lifespan psychology theories are the model of selection optimization and compensation (SOC; Baltes & Baltes, 1990), the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Carstensen, 1995) and the lifespan theory of control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). These prominent lifespan theories all propose that age-related changes trigger proactive behaviors. Age-related changes might refer to gains, such as improvements in crystallized intelligence, or to losses, such as deteriorating physical health (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). According to the lifespan theories, both gains and losses trigger pro-active behaviors and are thus important for successful aging (deficits-breed-growth mechanism; Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999;
Charles, 2010).
Although the lifespan theories agree upon the crucial role of pro-active behaviors, the types of propro-active behaviors that are triggered by age-related changes differ between the different lifespan theories (Table 1 for an overview). The SOC model (Baltes & Baltes, 1990) distinguishes three strategies to deal with age-related changes, which Table 1. Proactive Behaviors in Lifespan Psychology Literature
Proactive Behavior Type Description Example Behaviors
Selection Setting/selecting goals Specify goals, focus on most important
goals
Optimization Acquiring and investing in goal-relevant means Acquire new skills or resources, practice
skills, activate unused skills or resources Compensation (Baltes & Baltes,
1990) Compensating for unavailable goal- relevant means Recruit help or advice from others, use technical aids (e.g., assistive devices), manage impressions
Goal focus shift Goal focus shift from growth toward maintenance
and regulation of loss (Freund, 2006), from outcomes toward process goals (Freund, 2008), and instrumental goals toward affective goals (Carstensen, 1995)
Reallocate resources: invest less resources in learning new skills and more resources in knowledge transfer
Emotion regulation (Charles
& Carstensen, 2010) Controlling the type, extent, and timing of experienced emotions Avoid negative situations, select activities that are personally and emotionally meaningful
Primary control Changing the world to fit the needs and desires of
the individual Invest behavioral resources, such as effort, time, skills, persistence, into pursuing a goal
Secondary control (Heckhausen
& Schulz, 1995) Changing the self to bring oneself into line with environmental forces (an active process of restructuring one’s goals, rather than a passive reflection of failure and loss)
Devalue unattainable goals, enhance value of conflicting goals, find new meaning in a given experience, focus on successes in other domains
Preventive proactive behaviors Anticipating future stressors and delaying or
minimizing these stressors Engage in health promotion activities, career planning, helping others and social participation to increase social resources Corrective proactive behaviors
(Kahana & Kahana, 1996) Actively dealing with current stressors Mobilizing social support, and environmental modifications to meet personal demands
help individuals to get control over their environment and align them-selves with it (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010). The first strat-egy involves selecting, setting and prioritizing goals, based on personal preferences (elective selection) or forced by age-related losses that make other goals unattainable (loss-based selection). In the work con-text, selection involves, for example, choosing to focus more on those aspects of the job that are considered the most interesting, abandon-ing goals and tasks that are unattainable or cannot be accomplished anymore, and delegating low priority responsibilities. According to
Freund (2008), selection is particularly important to improve fit in old age, when individuals are confronted with an overall decline in resources and changes in personal needs or preferences. The second strategy is the optimization of goal-relevant means or resources, which might involve acquiring new or activating previously unused goal-relevant, external or internal resources, for example by investing more effort or through training. The third strategy involves compensating for losses in goal-relevant means or resources by using alternatives, such as taking additional breaks, asking coworkers for help, and hiring an assistant (Freund & Baltes, 2002; Zacher & Frese, 2011).
Building on the SOC model, Freund (2006, 2008; Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006) argued that age-related changes will also result in a shift in goal orientation, away from growth (or reaching higher levels of functioning) toward maintenance and regulation of loss, but also away from a focus on outcomes (e.g., getting promotion, reaching a cer-tain performance level) toward a focus on process goals (e.g., staying healthy, investing effort; also see Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). Aging individuals will thus reallocate their resources according to this shift in goal focus and invest less time in learning new skills to get promoted and more time in getting an assistant for example.
SST focuses solely on reallocating resources according to changing goal orientations as proactive behaviors to deal with age-related losses, specifically in time perspective (Carstensen, 1995). As older people perceive their future time as more limited than younger people, they are likely to give lower priority to more long-term instrumental goals related to acquiring knowledge and higher priority to short-term emo-tionally meaningful social interactions and goals, such as generativity and emotional intimacy (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). In addition, older people are better at emotion regulation (e.g., by focusing on positive experiences), which is also a form of proactive behavior, involving con-trolling the type, extent, and timing of experienced emotions (Charles & Carstensen, 2010).
Finally, the lifespan theory of control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995) suggests that people respond to age-related changes with both primary and secondary control strategies. Primary control strategies involve shaping the environment consistent with the needs of the individual, such as investing time and effort, and secondary control strategies involve changing goals to fit environmental demands, such as revalidating goals, and disengaging from goals. Aging individuals use both types of strategies. For example, older adults with health prob-lems were found to engage in health-related primary control strategies, such as putting in more effort to get better and getting help from a health professional, to protect against enhanced depressive symptoms (Wrosch, Schulz, Miller, Lupien, & Dunne, 2007). In addition, old adults were found to use primary control striving, such as taking more time to do the task or only doing the parts of the task that are possible, or a multistrategy approach of goal engagement (e.g., help seeking)
and disengagement (e.g., seeing the task as less important) to improve their physical and psychological well-being (Haynes, Heckhausen, Chipperfield, Perry, & Newall, 2009).
A final important lifespan theory is the model of preventive and corrective proactivity (PCP) for successful aging (Kahana & Kahana, 1996; Kahana, Kahana, & Lee, 2014), in which Kahana and Kahana (1996) explicitly emphasize the role of proactive behaviors. Similar to the lifespan theories described previously, the PCP model views older individuals as active, self-constructing, and self-reflecting agents within their environment, capable of shaping their environment rather than only responding to it (Lawton, 1989). The model proposes that older adults can reduce stressors, develop resources, and buffer the negative effect of stressors on life outcomes by engaging in preventive and corrective proactive behaviors. Preventive behaviors (also referred to as proactive coping; Ouwehand et al., 2007) include strategies to anticipate future stressors and delaying or minimizing these stress-ors, for instance through engagement in health promotion activities, career planning, helping others, and social participation to increase social resources, and actively preventing person–environment misfit (Kahana & Kahana, 1996; Kahana, Kelley-Moore, & Kahana, 2012;
Kahana et al., 2014). Corrective behaviors, such as mobilizing social support, and environmental modifications to meet personal demands, involve actively dealing with current stressors and are thus similar to compensation strategies in the SOC model (Kahana & Kahana, 1996;
Kahana et al., 2014).
In sum, lifespan psychology theories and literature build on the premise that individual agency plays a crucial role in human devel-opment, and thus that proactive behavior is important for successful aging (Heckhausen et al., 2010; Zacher, 2015; Zacher & Kooij, in press). In addition, this literature identifies a number of important pro-active behaviors for aging successfully at work, summarized in Table 1. However, organizational psychology literature, and particularly the lit-erature on proactive PE fit behavior and proactive career behavior, is also important in identifying relevant proactive behaviors.
PROACTIVE PE FIT AND PROACTIVE
C AR EER BEHAVIOR S IN ORG ANIZ ATIONAL
PSYCHOLO GY LITER ATUR E
In order to extend the proactive behaviors proposed in lifespan psy-chology literature, I will discuss the literature on proactive PE fit and proactive career behaviors to identify relevant proactive behaviors aimed at improving current and future fit, and thus serving the pur-pose for aging sustainably and successfully at work (Table 2 for an overview). Because this literature does not necessarily focus on aging workers, I will also discuss how the identified proactive behaviors change with age.
Parker and Collins (2010) argued that employees can take a pro-active role in increasing their level of PE fit, for example, by crafting their job or by seeking information about their job performance. They defined proactive PE fit behavior as “self-initiated behavior that aims to change oneself or the situation to achieve greater compat-ibility between one’s own attributes and the organizational environ-ment” (Parker & Collins, 2010, p. 640). Parker and Collins (2010)
proposed that proactive PE fit behavior is a higher-order category of proactive behaviors, such as proactive feedback seeking and proactive socialization. In line with Edwards (1991), Parker and Collins (2010)
Table 2. Proactive Behaviors in Organizational Psychology Literature
Proactive Behavior Type Description Example Behaviors
Feedback inquiry Actively gathering information about one’s
behavior by directly asking for feedback
Seek information from co-workers or supervisor about performance
Feedback monitoring (Ashford &
Black, 1996) Actively gathering information about one’s behavior by actively monitoring the situation and others’ behavior
Compare with peers, observe what performance behaviors is rewarded
Role innovation (Nicholson, 1984) Change task objectives, methods, materials, scheduling and the interpersonal relationships integral to task performance
Change the mission or purpose of the work role, alter procedures, redefine work role
Job change negotiation (Ashford &
Black, 1996) Negotiate job changes aimed at creating jobs that better suit skills and abilities Negotiate with others (including supervisor and/or coworkers) about task assignment
Task crafting Altering the type number, content or scope of
tasks
Take on challenging project, delegate tasks to coworkers, take on tasks that activate unused skills, decrease hindering demands to avoid negative situations
Relational crafting Altering the range, number or nature of
interactions with others Increase social interactions with coworkers, minimize contact with people who cost too much energy
Cognitive crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001)
Altering the view of the job View the job as an integrated whole instead of separate tasks
Negotiating task, development, flexibility or financial Ideals (Rousseau et al., 2006)
Individually negotiated unique and
individualized work arrangements Ask for flexibility in starting and ending time of the working day, negotiate special opportunities for skill development
Career initiative: Proactive career
planning behavior Initiatives and interventions that shape future careers Set goals, explore options, and formulate plans Proactive skill development behavior Initiatives and interventions that lead to
mastery of the various tasks involved in one’s occupation
Develop skills which may be needed in future positions, gain experience in a variety of work assignments to increase knowledge and skills Proactive consultation behavior/
seeking career guidance Seeking career guidance or help from an older more experienced person Seek a mentor inside or outside the organization Networking (Claes & Ruiz--
Quintanilla, 1998) Building a network of organizational contacts to obtain information, power, and support for career enhancement
Get introduced to, develop contacts with individuals in positions of power, influence or with access to information
Career exploration Gathering information about oneself and
employment opportunities Seek information on specific career areas or jobs interested in, reflect on past experiences
Developing career goals (Noe, 1996) Setting career goals Think about what one would like to accomplish
in work Self-nomination/self-presentation
(visibility activities and influence behavior)
Communicating one’s aspirations and goals for greater job responsibility to superiors and presenting oneself in the best possible light
Make supervisor aware of accomplishments, talk about one’s strength, make sure to get credit for the work done
Extending work involvement (influence behavior)
Extending work involvement beyond traditional working hours and preoccupying with work-related issues outside of the working environment
Take on task or extra responsibilities in order to acquire additional skills or be in contact with influential people
Ingratiating (influence behavior) Enhancing one’s interpersonal attraction with
respect to one’s superiors Agree, share opinions, express a favorable evaluation of the superior, take an interest in superiors’ personal life
Creating opportunities (Gould & Penley, 1984)
Developing expertise which is critical to one’s department’s operations and assuming leadership in areas where there appears to be no current leadership
Choose job moves which develop strategically valued skills, acquire strategically valued training
Developmental feedback seeking Seeking feedback on performance and career
distinguished between proactive behaviors aimed at demand–abilities fit and proactive behaviors aimed at needs–supplies fit. To increase demands–abilities fit, employees might engage in proactive feedback seeking, such as feedback inquiry (i.e., actively gathering informa-tion about one’s behavior by directly asking for feedback) or feedback monitoring (i.e., actively gathering information about one’s behavior by actively monitoring the situation and others’ behavior; Ashford & Black, 1996). A recent meta-analysis (Anseel, Beatty, Shen, Lievens, & Sackett, 2015) argued and found that age is negatively related to both types of feedback-seeking behavior. Based on the cost-value framework, Anseel and colleagues (2015) argued that older employ-ees will suffer less from role uncertainty, and thus will attach less value to feedback, whereas costs will increase, because older employees are assumed to know how to do their job and it is no longer appropriate to rely on others for help (Ashford, 1986).
Employees also engage in proactive behaviors aimed at increasing both demands–abilities and needs–supplies fit, such as changing task objectives or methods (i.e., role innovation; Nicholson, 1984) or nego-tiating task assignments (i.e., job change negotiation; Ashford & Black, 1996) so that the job better fits their skills, abilities, and preferences. Role innovation and job change negotiation are particularly examined among newcomers (e.g., Black & Ashford, 1995). Individuals entering new work situations are thought to either change their jobs or change themselves to create a better fit between them and their new jobs (Ashford & Black, 1996). However, as motives and abilities change, role innovation and job change negotiation could be very relevant for tenured employees as well.
Two more recently introduced types of proactive PE fit behaviors aimed at increasing both demands–abilities and needs–supplies fit are job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and negotiating idiosyn-cratic deals (Ideals; Rousseau, Ho, & Greenberg, 2006). Job crafting refers to the self-initiated changes that individuals make in the task or in relational boundaries of their work that are aimed at improving per-son–job fit (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) introduced three forms of
job crafting: task crafting which involves altering the type or number of tasks, relational crafting referring to altering the number or nature of interactions with others, and cognitive crafting which involves altering the view of the job. These broad job crafting forms have further been specified in recent research of Tims and colleagues (2012) for exam-ple. Building upon the job crafting and lifespan psychology literatures (e.g., Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004), Kooij and col-leagues (2015) introduced three primary forms of job crafting among aging employees: (a) Accommodative crafting, which refers to crafting activities aimed at reducing physical, cognitive, emotional, and quan-titative demands (i.e., regulating losses; Baltes & Baltes, 1990), such as delegating low priority responsibilities and looking for other ways to achieve goals; (b) Developmental crafting, which refers to crafting activities that are directed toward learning new skills (Robson et al., 2006) and increasing challenging demands and responsibilities (i.e., growth; Baltes & Baltes, 1990), such as taking on challenging assign-ments and tasks that expand the work role; and (c) Utilization crafting, which refers to crafting activities aimed at maintaining or improving interest in the job and utilizing and sharing current knowledge and skills, such as focusing on most interesting tasks that optimize existing knowledge and skills, taking on tasks that activate unused skills, and taking on tasks through which one can build meaningful relationships and increase the amount of help and mentoring provided to others. Particularly the latter form of job crafting lacks research attention.
Idiosyncratic deals (Ideals; Rousseau et al., 2006) refer to individu-ally negotiated unique and individualized work arrangements satisfy-ing the needs of the employee as well as the employer. Research on Ideals has identified four types of Ideals (Bal et al., 2012; Rosen, Slater, Chang, & Johnson, 2013): task Ideals (Hornung, Rousseau, Glaser, Angerer, & Weigl, 2010) refer to those arrangements employees nego-tiate concerning the tasks they conduct at work, as well as their respon-sibilities (and is thus related to job change negotiation); development Ideals refer to training and special opportunities for skill development; schedule and location flexibility Ideals concern the working hours of the employee and the place where the work is conducted; and financial
Proactive Behavior Type Description Example Behaviors
Job mobility preparedness (Kossek
et al., 1998) Gathering information about new career opportunities and preparing to act on them Obtain information about job opportunities, reflect on the next desired position Boundary management (King, 2004) Balancing the demands of work and nonwork Coordinate work hours with a partner to manage
time with children, navigate the transition between work and nonwork roles Positive mind-set and persistence Maintaining a positive mind-set and
demonstrating persistence Be positive, persist
Defeating stereotypes Defeating stereotypes Demonstrate abilities through learning and
applying new skills
Disability advocacy Engaging in disability advocacy to remove
performance myths Build awareness, influence organizational policy making
Disability networking (Kulkarni &
Gopakumar, 2014) Building, leveraging, and contributing to disability networks Seek or serve as mentor Coping skills (Lent & Brown, 2013) Engaging in coping skills and processes
initiated to negotiate life-role transitions and to adjust to challenging, and often unforeseen, work and work-life situations
Prepare for bridge employment, cope with stresses and conflicts related to one’s new role and responsibilities
Ideals concern individual deals with respect to salary and received bonuses. Bal and Jansen (2015) argued that negotiating Ideals is important for successful aging at work. They argued that since older workers have more heterogeneous needs than younger workers, indi-vidualized arrangements will benefit older workers, maintaining their motivation, performance, and health.
Whereas the types of proactive PE fit behavior discussed previ-ously are particularly aimed at increasing current fit, employees might also engage in proactive behaviors that focus on longer-term compat-ibility between the requirements of work and the individual’s career expectations and preferences and so increase future PE or person–job fit (Parker & Collins, 2010). Grant and Parker (2009) labeled this higher-order dimension of proactive behavior as proactive career behavior, which refers to proactivity beyond a specific job, such as actions to secure a job or to get a new job (Crant, 2000).
One specific type of proactive career behavior is career initiative, which includes proactive career planning, skill development, consul-tation, and networking (Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998; Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001; Tharenou & Terry, 1998). Another type of proactive career behavior that is closely related to career initiative is career self-management, which refers to the proactivity employees show with respect to managing their career (De Vos, Dewettinck, & Buyens, 2009). The concept of career self-management challenges the assumption that employees are passive and reactive when it comes to their career and explicitly recognizes that employees take deliberate actions to take charge of their own career. Although career self-man-agement behaviors are usually aimed at career progression, employees might engage in career self-management behaviors for other reasons (e.g., security, balance, personal development, or increased mean-ingfulness). As such, employees manage their careers to reach their personal career goals, and thus to achieve future fit. In line with this reasoning, Noe (1996, p. 119) defined career self-management as “the process by which individuals collect information about values, interests, and skill strengths and weaknesses (career exploration), identify a career goal, and engage in career strategies that increase the probability that career goals will be achieved.” In line with this reason-ing, De Vos and Seegers (2013) found that older workers (aged 45+) engaging in career self-management behaviors were less inclined to retire early.
Different authors mention different career self-management strat-egies (Table 2). Sturges, Conway, and Liefooghe (2010) provided an overview of these behaviors. They distinguished networking behav-ior, visibility behavior (e.g., drawing attention to work achievements), influencing behavior (e.g., intended to influence the decisions of superiors at work), positioning behavior (e.g., pursuing valuable job opportunities), building human capital (e.g., through training and education), and mobility-oriented behavior (e.g., making plans to leave the organization). In addition, King (2004) distinguished boundary management, which refers to balancing the demands of work and nonwork. A major limitation of studies on career self-management is that most of these studies are conducted using sam-ples of relatively young employees (De Vos & Seegers, 2013; Zacher & Griffin, 2015). Studies that do include a broader age range show inconsistent findings with respect to the relationship between age and career self-management behaviors, reporting decreases (e.g., in net-working behavior; Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998), increases (e.g., in job mobility preparedness; Kossek, Roberts, Fisher, & Demarr,
1998), and insignificant relations with age (e.g., in skill development;
Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998).
Nevertheless, there are a few studies that provide some insight in career self-management strategies of aging workers. Kulkarni and Gopakumar (2014), for example, examined career self-management strategies of people with disabilities which might also be useful for aging workers dealing with age-related challenges. They distinguished a number of self-management strategies that people with disabilities engage in: (a) maintaining a positive mind-set and demonstrating per-sistence; (b) defeating stereotypes by demonstrating abilities through learning, applying new skills, and by seeking feedback (Finkelstein, King, & Voyles, 2015); (c) engaging in disability advocacy to remove performance myths; and (d) building, leveraging, and contributing to disability networks by seeking or serving as mentor.
In addition, Lent and Brown (2013) developed a social cognitive model of career self-management to identify adaptive career behaviors relevant across the lifespan. They distinguished two types of adaptive career behavior. One is engaging in relatively normative and proactive developmental tasks associated with age-related cognitive develop-ment, nurtured by social learning experiences (e.g., career exploration, proactive skill development behavior). The other is engaging in cop-ing skills and processes initiated to negotiate life-role transitions and to adjust to challenging, and often unforeseen, work and work–life situa-tions, such as work stress and job loss. They identified career behaviors relevant among aging workers in the maintenance career stage, such as recycling through earlier career stage tasks, building job niches (e.g., taking a leadership or specialist role), developing career self-renewal plans, and preparing for bridge employment. These proactive PE fit and proactive career behaviors can complement proactive behaviors proposed in lifespan psychology literature.
BR ID GING LIFESPAN AND ORG ANIZ ATIONAL
PSYCHOLO GY LITER ATUR ES: PROACTIVE
BEHAVIOR S FOR SUCCESSFUL AGING
AT WOR K
In order to integrate and bridge lifespan and organizational psychol-ogy literatures, I will use the proactive PE fit and proactive career behaviors proposed in organizational psychology literature to extend and specify the proactive behaviors aimed at dealing with age-related losses proposed in lifespan psychology literature in the work context. First, to select or set goals at work, employees can engage, for example, in task crafting (e.g., accommodative crafting; Kooij et al., 2015) or job change and task Ideal negotiation (Ashford & Black, 1996; Hornung et al., 2010) to reduce their workload or change their tasks. Another proactive behavior relevant for selection is proactive career planning behavior (Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998), such as setting clear career goals, as argued by Abele and Wiese (2008). Further, there are many proactive behaviors, such as proactive skill development behav-ior (Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998), negotiating development Ideals (Rousseau et al., 2006), feedback-seeking behavior (Ashford & Black, 1996), and utilization crafting (Kooij et al., 2015) relevant for optimi-zation. At work, aging employees might acquire and invest in goal-rele-vant means by developing skills needed in future positions, negotiating special trainings, seeking feedback from coworkers, or taking on tasks that activate unused skills and knowledge. Next, to compensate or engage in corrective proactive behaviors (e.g., recruit help of others or
manage impressions), aging employees could engage in relational or accommodative crafting (Kooij et al., 2015; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), increasing relationships with others and using tools or aids to do their job, or they could aim to defeat stereotypes of older workers or engage in older worker advocacy (Kulkarni & Gopakumar, 2014).
There are a range of proactive behaviors that could help aging work-ers to shift their goal focus and reallocate their resources accordingly at work. By role innovation (Nicholson, 1984) or utilization crafting (e.g., looking for tasks that match their interests; Kooij et al., 2015), aging employees could try to change their job tasks to better fit their changing goals and motives. Aging employees could also increase their job mobility preparedness (Kossek et al., 1998) and engage in proac-tive career planning behavior (Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998). This would mean they have to recycle through earlier career stage tasks to again explore their opportunities and interests in order to develop career self-renewal plans and set new career goals (Lent & Brown, 2013). When goals and motives are shifting outside of work, aging employees could engage in boundary management or negotiate flex-ibility Ideals (King, 2001; Rousseau et al., 2006) to be able to spend more time on leisure activities.
To control the type, extent, and timing of experienced emotions (i.e., emotion regulation), aging employees could engage in task crafting, and particularly in decreasing hindering demands to avoid negative sit-uations (Tims et al., 2012), but also utilization crafting to increase the meaningfulness of work (Kooij et al., 2015). Aging workers could also engage in (cognitive) coping skills to regulate their emotions (Lent & Brown, 2013). Engaging in primary control strategies at work could involve creating opportunities, extending work involvement, and self-nomination/self-presentation (Gould & Penley, 1984). Aging employ-ees can engage in these visibility and influence behaviors (King, 2001;
Sturges et al., 2010) to change their environment to fit their needs and desires. Aging employees could, for example, acquire strategically valued training, take on extra tasks to be in contact with influential people, or make their supervisor aware of their accomplishments and career goals. Another proactive behavior relevant for primary control is maintaining a positive mind-set and demonstrating persistence (Kulkarni & Gopakumar, 2013). To engage in secondary control strate-gies, aging employees could cognitively craft their job (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). For example, changing the meaning of their work is one way to find new meaning in a given experience. Finally, preventive proactive behaviors at work could refer to relational crafting, and par-ticularly increasing social resources (Tims et al., 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), proactive career planning (Claes & Ruiz--Quintanilla, 1998), ingratiating, networking (in general or specifically with older employees; Kulkarni & Gopakumar, 2013), and seeking career guid-ance (Gould & Penley, 1984). In order to anticipate future stressors and delay or minimize them, aging employees could get introduced to individuals with access to information, build new relationships at work, take an interest in their superiors’ private life, or seek a mentor inside or outside the organization (i.e., to increase social resources) or they could explore future career options and formulate plans to reach them.
DISCUSSION
Since workforces are aging, governments, organizations, and research-ers are increasingly interested in the topic of successful aging at work. In this paper, I viewed successful aging at work from a sustainability
perspective, which implies that effectively managing (i.e., preserving and regenerating; Docherty et al., 2009) current and future resources is crucial (Freund, 2008). To effectively manage their resources, aging workers should strive for current and future person–job fit. This means that they should optimally utilize current strengths and abilities, with-out exhausting abilities, and developing skills and abilities needed for future work requirements. Hence, for employees to be able to maintain their health, motivation, and work ability, and thus age successfully at work, a continuous person–job fit (Edwards et al., 2006) between their changing abilities and motives and changing work is required. One important way to achieve current and future fit is by engaging in proactive behaviors (Kira et al., 2010; Kooij et al., 2015). Therefore, in this article, I aimed to identify proactive behaviors for successful aging at work by extending the proactive behaviors proposed in lifespan psy-chology literature with proactive behaviors proposed in organizational psychology literature. Specifically, with this article, I aimed to contrib-ute to the literature on aging at work in two ways. First, by viewing suc-cessful aging at work from a sustainability perspective, I demonstrate the crucial role of current and future person–job fit for successful aging at work. Second, by integrating lifespan and organizational psychology literatures, I identify a range of proactive behaviors potentially relevant for successful aging at work.
In particular, integrating lifespan psychology and organizational psychology literatures, I identified a range of proactive behaviors that specify the proactive behaviors or action-regulation strategies dis-cussed in lifespan psychology literature. Job crafting, for example, can help aging workers to adjust their job to changing goals and motives (e.g., shifting from growth goals to regulating losses), improving cur-rent person–job fit. Proactive career planning and skill development, as another example, can help aging workers to set new career goals and develop skills which may be needed in these future positions. A final example is building a network, which might help aging employees to increase social resources. These proactive behaviors offer aging employees a means to continuously adjust their work to intrapersonal changes that are part of the aging process, but also to continuously adjust themselves to (future) work requirements. These behaviors will optimize current and future fit, and thus result in sustainable and suc-cessful aging at work (Kooij et al., 2015).
Future research should examine which forms of proactive behav-iors aging employees use to improve current and future fit and in turn, age successfully at work. I offered a range of possible proactive behav-iors aging employees might engage in, but we lack research on which of these behaviors aging employees actually use. Proactive behaviors for successful aging at work might also change with age. For example, similar to age-related decreases in the use of primary control, older employees might engage less in creating opportunities, extending work involvement, and self-nomination/self-presentation. Further, we do not know whether aging employees engage in one type of proactive behavior only or whether they use combinations of several behaviors to maximize outcomes. For instance, an employee could start crafting the job by taking on tasks that utilize his or her knowledge and expe-riences and subsequently negotiate a task I-deal with the supervisor to formalize this change. In the current literature proactive behaviors are largely described separately, neglecting possible synergies and/or integration.
Future research should also further specify the proactive behaviors for successful aging at work. Many of the proactive behaviors identified
in organizational psychology literature are aimed at younger or middle-aged workers. For example, proactive career behaviors are particularly focused on moving upward in one’s career. However, older employees might not be interested in moving upward, but more interested in mak-ing lateral or even downward movements. Therefore, we need studies on whether the proactive career behaviors discussed in organizational psychology literature are actually appropriate for reaching these other types of career goals. The same holds for other proactive behaviors (e.g., job crafting; Kooij et al., 2015).
The proactive behaviors for successful aging at work identified in this paper could be of practical importance to aging employees and their organizations. Organizations can stimulate this type of behaviors, for example, by high involvement management (HIM), participative and transformational leadership, or autonomous job design (Bindl & Parker, 2011; Parker, Wall, & Cordery, 2001; see also Ng & Feldman, 2015). HIM involves HR practices that stimulate flexibility and proactivity, such as decentralized decision–making, teamwork, extensive training, information sharing, flexible job descriptions, career development, par-ticipation in decision-making, feedback, and job rotation (Vandenberg, Richardson, & Eastman, 1999; Wood, Van Veldhoven, Croon, & De Menezes, 2012). Earlier studies demonstrated that these types of HR practices result in psychological empowerment (e.g., self-efficacy and self-determination; Messersmith, Patel, & Lepak, 2011). Participative and transformational leaders share their attractive future vision, inspire subordinates, and share power and decision-making authority with subordinates, stimulating them to engage in proactive behaviors (Den Hartog & Belschak, 2012; Rank, Carsten, Unger, & Spector, 2007; see also Boehm & Dwertmann, 2015). High involvement management and participative and transformational leadership might thus also lead to increased proactive PE fit and career behaviors, and in turn to success-ful aging at work. In addition, the proactive behaviors could be a source of inspiration for aging employees themselves, helping them to improve current and future person–job fit and thus to age successfully at work.
FUNDING
This research was funded by a VENI grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.
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