Age Diversity as a Risk Factor for Psychological Safety in Teams of Older Employees

Abstract

Age diversity has become a more and more pressing issue in modern working teams. Yet the effects of age diversity are not fully understood. While psychological safety is both dependent on interpersonal relationships and an important antecedent of team performance, it has never been studied as a potential mediator of the link between age diversity and team performance. In this study, we aim to close this gap in the literature and introduce team age as a moderator of this relationship as we argue that perceptions of age diversity might shift between different age cohorts due to stereotype threat. We tested our assumptions using a sample of 1441 white-collar workers, nested in 109 working teams. Using aggregated team-level data, we tested a moderated mediation model with age diversity as a predictor, psychological safety as a mediator, team age as moderator, and team performance as an outcome. We found a negative relationship between age diversity and psychological safety for teams of older employees. This moderation translated into a negative moderated mediation effect of age diversity on team performance via the mediator psychological safety for older teams. In conclusion, age diversity seems to be a significant risk factor for psychological safety and subsequently team performance in teams of older employees but not in teams of younger employees. Our study complements the existing literature integrating psychological safety literature, age diversity literature, and stereotype threat literature by demonstrating, that age diversity is a risk factor for psychological safety and subsequently team performance in teams of older employees.