Abstract
Status incongruence resulting from a supervisor who is younger than their subordinate potentially leads to age stereotyping of employees. This article investigates the relationship between age difference and supervisory ratings of five competence-based measures of subordinate employability (Occupational Expertise, Anticipation/Optimisation, Personal Flexibility, Corporate Sense, and Balance). In addition, we consider the buffering role of a supportive learning context which allows older workers access to learning resources. Learning context is represented by duration of the supervisory relationship, perceived organizational learning climate and participation in, and application of, training and development. Using 295 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors in a Dutch building company, findings show that age dissimilarity reflecting status incongruence was related to lower supervisory ratings of Occupational Expertise (job-related competence) and Corporate Sense (social/organizational competence) regardless of learning context. Longer duration relationships exacerbated, rather than buffered, the age difference effect on some types of supervisory ratings. The implications of these findings for age stereotyping with regard to employability are considered.
Highlights
The implications of age stereotyping for older workers’ career potential has received little attention so far (De Vos et al, 2020)
We build on Tsui and O’Reilly’s (1989) concept of relational demography which proposes that the comparativesimilarity in demographic attributes of a superior and a subordinate may affect a range of work outcomes, in our case supervisors’ evaluations of their workers’ employability
When employees are enabled to continuously develop their professional knowledge and skills through access to job-relevant training, we propose that age norms which could influence supervisors with respect to their employees’ career potential are less relevant (Vickerstaff and Van der Horst, 2021) and that directional age differences are less salient with respect to employability ratings
Summary
The implications of age stereotyping for older workers’ career potential has received little attention so far (De Vos et al, 2020). We examine whether age differences between employees and their supervisors, in particular, when supervisors are younger than their employees, influence supervisors’ employability ratings. Building upon the sustainable careers paradigm (Van der Heijden and De Vos, 2015; De Vos et al, 2020), we argue that the age difference in the employee-supervisor dyadic relationship comprises an important contextual factor that influences one’s career potential. We argue that employability is a key performance indicator in contemporary working life
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