Architecture of age management in traditional and based-on-knowledge organizations

Modern organizations face many challenges, and among them an aging population. The aging population process requires attention in the development of strategies, programs and organizational practices. Therefore the aim of the article is to present the results of research on age management in Polish organizations. Age management architecture will consist of institutional, functional and instrumental dimensions. We examine the opinion of employers about older people in a situation ripe for cooperation and recruitment, and assess the chances of finding a new job in the event of loss or preferences for teamwork. Also examined will be the cooperation with trade unions, age management tools, older staff training, decision level and respondent responsibility for the overall age management activities.

Polish traditional organizations and based-on-knowledge organisations, entities whose assets are primarily intangible resources such as staff expertise, know-how, etc., have different approach to older workers. Polish entrepreneurships do not, as yet, employ age management on a common basis. Both in the context of perceiving mature employees and age management tools used in practice as well as overall “climate”, they are advanced at an intermediate level and quite diversified. The study presented in the paper showed adoption of the age management Wallin and Hussi concept (age management reactive and proactive strategies). Strategy of 1st (“enhancing individual resources”), and 2nd (“intergenerational learning”) and 3rd (“life-course approach”) generations happens more by organisations based on knowledge.  Reactive strategies of ‘solving the problem of scarce resources’ and ‘'reducing labour requirements’ (“hard” age management) are implemented more willingly by traditional companies. Such an approach to age management in the form of hard and soft strategies may highlight a question of divisibility of both approaches, however, despite certain simplifications, an ordering quality cannot be denied.

We will attempt to answer the question of why age management is distinct in both types of organizations. The objectives will be achieved using an author synthetic index of age management applied to a representative sample of Polish organizations. The results will be supported by analysis of the literature.