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Reaching the Heart or the Mind? Test of Two Theory-Based Training Programs to Improve Interactions Between Age-Diverse Coworkers

2020; Academy of Management; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5465/amle.2019.0348

1944-9585

Anne Burmeister, Fabiola H. Gerpott, Andreas Hirschi, Susanne Scheibe, Karen Pak, Dorien Kooij,

Retirement, Disability, and Employment

Due to demographic change, age diversity is increasing in many organizations.We aimed to understand how organizations can use age diversity training to overcome the challenges and realize the benefits of an age-diverse workforce.We built on the two predominant theoretical perspectives in the diversity literature-social identity theory and the information and decision-making perspective-to advance a dual pathway model and develop two age diversity training programs: identity-oriented training that helps organizations to overcome the challenges of age diversity by "speaking to the heart" of agediverse coworkers and knowledge-oriented training that helps organizations to realize the benefits of age diversity by "speaking to the mind" of age-diverse coworkers.We tested both training programs in a randomized controlled field experiment with age-diverse coworker dyads.We found that the identity-oriented training facilitated contact quality as a socioemotional outcome through increased levels of coworker's perceived similarity and also reduced stereotype threat.The knowledge-oriented training increased knowledge transfer as a sociocognitive outcome through increased levels of coworker's perceived knowledge utility and transactive memory.In a pilot training integration study, we made a first attempt to develop and test an integrated training program.Our findings advance research on the evidence-based management of age diversity.How can organizations improve interactions among age-diverse coworkers?Answering this question is important as interactions among employees from different age groups can be challenging.Research has reported tensions and lower-quality interactions among age-diverse coworkers (Finkelstein, Ryan, & King, 2013;King & Bryant, 2017;North & Fiske, 2015) which can in turn result in decreased performance (Kunze, Boehm, & Bruch, 2011) and increased turnover (Schneid, Isidor, Steinmetz, & Kabst, 2016).Furthermore, although age-diverse employees possess unique knowledge due to differences in socialization, education, and on-the-job experiences, they do not automatically exchange